Tuesday, October 28, 2008

College Essay

College Essay

“Your brother is different.” That’s how my mother decided to tell a five year old me that my brother had Autism. Until that point I had never thought there was anything different about him. He was just my older brother; he played with me like any sibling would, and watched cartoons with my sister and I. The thought that something was wrong with him seemed incomprehensible. As I got older I realized what my mother had meant, that little kid in me faded with age and became less compatible with my brother. It was difficult for me to bond with some one who couldn’t answer me back. This didn’t mean that we were unable to have a normal family life. When we got aggravated with each other it was hard because after a fight we couldn’t go up to each other and apologize. I guess I became used to things being left unsaid. As I moved on to high school and matured the one thing that bridged the gap between us was movies.
Since we were little it was what we loved to do you put a movie on and my brother and I would be quiet for as long as that movie would last. That love stayed with us because it was our way to escape from everything around us and be in another place, and another time. When he watched a movie his eyes would light up and shine and a smile would appear on his face from ear to ear. It was always incredible to me how he would react to the movies it was like everyone in the room was gone and he wasn’t on the other side of the television. He was there in the moment he was the main character fighting a pirate. He was the boy riding on the polar express to a place unknown. With every twist and turn his joy and excitement would fill the room. Since this was our only true time to bond; I always watched him carefully and through his expressions alone I was there right next to him. Whether it was fighting a villain, flying a plane, or saving a princess I was there. We were side kicks; the brother and sister who couldn’t stand each other, were now best friends. When he was in that movie for at least an hour and a half he was in control. My parents weren’t there handing him what clothes to wear, what food to eat, or sending him off to school. Fabian was in control so if he didn’t like a part he would skip over it, this was his world and he was king; and no one tells the king what to do in his castle. If he was to like a certain part he would watch it over, and over again and he would do it till he decided he was ready to continue on with the film. I loved that my brother was able to finally have a say, if I am tired, don’t feel well, or am not ready to face something; I can say it. With Fabian he can’t, he has no way of telling his feelings, sadly the best we can do is try and guess. It may not be fair, but it’s the best we can do for now. Regardless of all the restrictions, limitations, and complications in his life he always has a smile on his face. I admire him for that; it is always the most unfortunate who are the happiest. I truly believe in this; I am blessed with a voice and the strength and free will to take action on it.
Our love of movies has been what has kept us together, even after all life changes that have occurred my brother is still one of the most important people in my life. He is also my biggest inspiration, every opportunity that I am given I go for it, and every obstacle I take head on. I try and live by this because I am lucky for what I have and I know I don’t need more, I realize through my brother that having everything you could ever want is no life at all. Tomorrow I could lose some one or something that matters to me, and thanks to him I realize that happiness is obtainable and the only person preventing your happiness is you.

The One Page Memior

It was the summer of 2007; I was out of school, and into friends, sleeping in, and living in the moment. I wasn’t alone on my journey I had four friends ready to start it with me. It all started the day of a party at a boy’s house I had just met but he knew my two best friends. Usually I enjoy sticking to my element and don’t appreciate diving in to things head first, but there was something different about that day. For the first time in my life I wasn’t scared of being who I was. I wasn’t scared of being loud, telling inappropriate jokes, or making a fool out of my self because everyone else was eager to do the same with me. There were no awkward silences or lack of conversation topics; it was as if we were all friends since we were old enough to remember each other.
There was Ana, what she lacked in height she made up for in personality she had been the one person I had known since as long as I could remember. Her personality was so big, and amazingly outgoing at times I felt like I did not have to be anything but her friend, I was always extremely dependent on her. This was the first day that I was really me was at that party, and when I realized that I looked to my best friend to see if she noticed my burst of confidence and she looked back at me with pride. Then there was Kristen, we had just become friends that year. With Kristen there was never a dull moment, she was the kind of friend you could laugh with for hours on end, and cry with over how miserable you both were at the same time. Through her and Ana I met Andrew. Andrew was different out of all the guy friends I had ever had, in fact he was the polar opposite. He laughed at everything we found funny, and was not scared to make a fool out of him self and by acting like an idiot like the rest of us he actually seemed cooler than most guys.
It seemed like the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and it was. We would spend everyday together, and even when we were doing nothing we were always entertained. We were like the perfect four piece puzzle; soon we became five when Eric came into the picture. He was Andrews’s cousin and knew just how to make us all laugh, some might call his humor weird, but weird is all that our group knew and it worked for us. We all became inseparable, although we had families, jobs, and other friends we always in between the chaos ended up together. We spent one amazing summer together, some of us fell in love, and some of us fell out of it. Some of us strayed at the end and some of us stayed. Some of us fought, and some of us made up. The day before my junior year was to begin I looked at pictures of all of us, we looked fearless, confident, and on top of the world. We all brought something different and incredible to the table. We had an incredible run for three months, and when life came back in to the picture as soon as it came it was gone. I had lost what I had been searching for, I look back on it now as the happiest time of my life. Although I miss it and wish that we were all still a part of each others life we will always have that summer, and I will always have that first day we were all together where everything fell into place, and for the first time I was me.

Filler Page

Although I had a true realization of what it was to be a woman in a culture that at times can be oppressing towards my sex. I had a realization of what it was to be a woman, just a woman. When I figured out what that truly meant I realized that I had to be what a woman was, a strong, caring, protective, and undefeatable being. For me to be what it was I wanted to, I had to leave what I had always known, and what I had over time learned to resent. I resented what it stood for but my home, my true home is a place I could never truly hate or resent. The people I’ve met, and the family I had will always be what I think of when I remember home.
There is a saying that “Home is where the heart is.” For the first time in my life I understood it. My home was my friends, my loved ones, and my books. They were always with me. Their comforting words, the stories they told which made me laugh, cry, smile, and even shake in suspense stayed with me. They were there the moment I walked out of my home and turned back to face it for the last time. The memories may have occurred in this physical location but they would never be truly taken away from me. They would stay in my heart for ever, and that was exactly how long I planned to keep them with me.

Book Cover Meta-cognitive

Meta-Cognitive on Book Cover

For the book cover I made for the Memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran I thought about the book and one major theme, or topic I thought of was struggle. The memoir is built off of the struggle of a woman’s persistence to bring knowledge to those who want and deserve it. I thought of the face of a woman looking down in sadness, and despair. I chose to keep it simple by adding no colors or something that really pulls in the eye to much. I wanted it to have a bit of eeriness, and at the same time a sense of clarity and serenity. What I wanted to portray was the moment she realized that she was going to begin teaching these secret classes, and the emotion and sadness she has towards what her country has become.
I feel like the cover of my book fits the author’s style of writing because it is modest. This memoir is an incredible story of drive and persistence but the way it is written, makes it seem as though the author feels like what she did was not so important or brave. Since I really enjoyed this memoir I feel like finding a picture to draw would be easy to do. Though this story has its happy moments the oppression is what makes the story so like-able, and truly grasps the reader and pulls them in to the story. I think my main approach to making the cover was depicting a moment from it how I pictured it to be in my own mind.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Meta-Congnition

Carla Castillo
Mr. Gallagher
Period 2
Metacognition
For this assignment I chose to re-write a Greek myth in the style of William Faulkner. I began the process by choosing which myth it was that I enjoyed the most and I really enjoyed the myth of daedalus and Icarus I thought that this would be really easy for me to write as Faulkner because since it is so open ended with its descriptiveness I could easily add in the details of how I saw it. What stimulated my ideas was doing the myth in modern times in the army. I chose the army because I feel like what is going on today in the world we live in is easily connected to what the story touches on. My audience is I guess our class and Mr. Gallagher, as for my purpose it was to send the message to the reader that karma is in fact a reality. You take a father who has a very close relationship with his son, and make him kill a son of his sister is really ironic because he understands how much his son means to him, or how much a child means to a parent but because of his tragic flaw of jealousy he went ahead with killing Perdix regardless of how much his son meant to him. Since he ignored what was right and did what was wrong he was punished with exactly the crime he committed.

Since I was absent I did not get the real opportunity to get advice from some one else in time but going over what I had written I felt that the first time I wrote a quick draft I had to much dialogue so I decided instead to tell it from the perspective of a narrator who was in the story in a way but not a main character. Since Faulkner always uses and interesting point of view for his narrators I did the same and left on line of dialogue at the end that was actually said by the character in the story. By ending it that way I felt it was more powerful, that the one line of dialogue in the whole story was the last words before the downfall of the tragic hero.

Some areas I need to improve on I feel are that in most of my papers I begin strong and lose that special something I had at the beginning or start out slow and have a really good ending. I feel that what I need to really improve on is having a fluid paper one that is equally strong in every paragraph and can really pull a reader in to my story. I feel that I want to have stronger papers, a another big issue is my ideas are always scattered and jumping from one thing to another constantly. This is really not enjoyable for the reader at all, I would not want to read a paper like that so I hope to improve mine.

Daedalus and Icarus as Told by Faulkner

Carla Castillo
Mr. Gallagher
Period 2
Daedalus, and Icarus as Told by Faulkner
It was a foggy, humid and dreary day at the Military base, you were lucky to see your hand if it was in front of your face the air smelt of gasoline, and paint. Daedalus was always a clever man, his hands were his weapons he could make anything into something better than it originally was. When he saw his nephew was moving up the line in ranking too quickly he feared they would let his nephew Perdix, take his spot in building the fighter jets. When Perdix was chosen to lead the troops in to battle, Daedalus was to build a special jet for Perdix, in a moment of pure jealousy he left the jet with to many flaws for it to work, and Daedalus was so lost in his anger he forgot to cover up what he had done. When Perdix’s jet crashed and he died they discovered why it had actually crashed. As a punishment they left him and his son Icarus stranded at the base that was to be bombed the following day by their opponent. They had no way to escape, until Daedalus found enough parts to construct to functional jets.

When he had finished the jets Daedalus realized that they opposing army would see that they were from the Base and shoot down their jets. So he found cans of gray paint just like the other armies jets were and began to paint them with Icarus as fast as possible. There was just not enough time to let them dry the paint would not stay on the metal because it was not made for metal so they needed to leave as soon as the possibly could. Daedalus new his son Icarus was to young to be prepared to fly it properly, but after instructing him for about twenty minutes he was sure Icarus could handle it. Daedalus had one major warning for his son, that was to fly low so that they could go by undetected and if the sun were to appear the paint would melt off and he would be completely exposed. Icarus told his father that he had nothing to
fear he understood what he had to do.

Since Daedalus had to prep Icarus’s jet for take off Icarus was to go first his father kissed his son and told him that he would be okay and that he would see him soon. As Icarus took off Daedalus found he was wiping tears from his eyes. He had never been so proud of his son as he was at that moment. Suddenly the clouds slowly cleared as Icarus took to the sky it was almost as if the heavens wanted to awake to watch his son become a true man. In the excitement Icarus started going higher and higher in his jet. He got so wrapped up in the moment he forgot what his father had warned him about, and as the sun got brighter and brighter the heat hitting the jet was increasing rapidly. As Icarus stared out to the open sky he saw gray drops of paint sliding down the windshield when he realized what he had done he tried to lower his jet. As Daedalus saw what was happening in the distance he heard the sound of more than ten jets heading towards the base. He cried out to his son and in less then a second, fire and smoke filled the sky and the only trace left of his son was a cloud of black smoke.

As the other jets circled over the base Daedalus thought of what he had done and fell to his knees sobbing, because he let jealousy, envy, and anger get the best of him he made a terrible mistake and took the life of a son away from its parent, and the gods had decided to return the favor. The sky darkened and although the sound of the jets was roaring all around him, it was as if the whole world had been muted, the sound and noise were gone all that remained was the drops of rain and wind that was pounding against his body . As he looked to the sky trying to find an answer to why his son was punished for his wrong doing, balls of black, orange, and red smoke began to fall towards the ground. When Daedalus realized that this was the end that he would not have to bare the pain any longer he smiled to the sky and said to his son in heaven. "I’ll see you soon my son, ill see you soon".