Standing in the right is me, Allison Mendoza, and the person that I have my arms wrapped around is Jacob Eaker, the first friend I made in Tiger Theater, and the person I have looked up to these past three years that I have been acting.

Coming to Consol, I knew I wanted to do theater. I have been wanting to act since I can remember, but high school theater would finally be my time to “shine”. I auditioned for the play Dracula and had earned the role of one of the guards. I cried the day the cast list was dropped because I was disappointing that I couldn’t get the lead role. The first day of rehearsals was very overwhelming, I was a freshman surrounded by people who had done this many times in the past, they all knew each other. I scanned the room and to say the least, they all looked pretty intimidating, I glanced at a guy with hair that covered half of his face, he was looking over the script. Our director, Mr. Williamson came and told us to go to the auditorium and so we did. He began this first rehearsal with a technique that he will continue using in all the shows that I’ve been in to this day, he wanted us to relax and get to know each other. He told us to partner up with a person and I felt so terrified because I knew absolutely NO ONE! But the guy with the long hair who had to flip it back so you could see his eyes came towards me and introduced himself, “I’m Jacob”, and so I introduced myself and as much as I wish I could remember the whole conversation, I can’t. But what I can remember is that this guy was the first person who came up to me and made me feel not so alone anymore.

I got to know Jacob even better during Dracula, and let me tell you that he is one of the sweetest, most understanding person that I know. He worked at Blue Baker and in most rehearsals he would bring bread to share with the whole cast. He socialized with everyone and was extremely friendly. A few days later I found out that he was a Junior and I felt extremely happy, because that meant that I had another year left with him. I was encouraged by him and Ms. Pena to join speech and debate, so I did. But, as much as I would like to brag, I did not do so great in the tournaments, probably because performing in front of a judge felt more intimidating than in front of an audience. Jacob however, owned all of the performances that he would be in. I came to watch him once at the speech and debate tournament and his acting was magnificent, and I thought “I want to be as good as he is”.

Freshman year came and went and during sophomore year I wasn’t feeling so alone anymore. I had made a few friends in tiger theater and I had my best friend, Jacob Eaker. The show being produced for my sophomore year was Game of Tiaras and I was given the role of the Blood Packet Guy, this would be the last fall show that I would participate in with Jacob and just as Dracula, we had lots of fun during this production and I got to know Jacob even better. But during the One Act Play during my sophomore year, this was the one year that I truly admired this guy for his acting skills. He auditioned for the lead role of Dr. Jekyll Hyde in the play of Chemical Imbalance and he had gotten it! As he should. And I played Jekyll’s sister, Ambrosia. Our chemistry on stage was phenomenal, we made a great duo and there was this laugh we both shared together that we never messed up. When Jacob transformed himself from Jekyll into Hyde, he would quite literally throw himself into the stage and start shaking. He could have won an Academy Award with that performance, let me just say that. During the competition, I was so glad to have heard his name be called out when he won Best Actor, because not only was it his last year but his performance was unmatched. When they called out Best Actress, he told me “you will get it next year”, and these words made me smile very more, because he was the person I looked up to and he made sure to tell me that I was great, and to not worry about not earning an award that year. We didn’t advance, and that disappointed him the most because he believed that winning best actor was guaranteed to allow us to advance.

Now you might think, how does this affect me? Well, Jacob wasn’t just my friend, he is the person who has inspired many of the passions I hold to this day. I like photography because of him, he taught me how to work with the sound during my freshman year, he always made sure to be understanding and always listened to everything I said. His acting inspired me to further my love for acting and taught me so many new techniques. Jacob Eaker is dedicated, passionate, smart and kind. Many of his qualities have grown on me and I am so grateful that I was gifted with such an amazing inspiration, because I believe in Jacob’s talent and ability to do great things in his future.

The picture above was taken after my Junior production, Badgers. I was given the lead role of Rose and I was so happy because I had worked so hard for that moment, my first moment to “shine” on that stage in front of an audience. Jacob had been there on the last production, he had come to watch it all the way from UT, where he attended this year to continue pursuing his dream of acting. He came with us to celebrate our last production to Denny’s, which has been our tradition since we can all remember, and that’s when we took that picture. The smile and the hugs mean so much more than that picture tells, Jacob Eaker deserves the future, because he gave me one that is far more meaningful to me today.

As a junior in high school, soon to be senior, the college application process is here, or soon to be here for most of the people in my class… and without a doubt this process is stressful. Recently, with the COVID-19 outbreak and school ending early for the spring semester, I have encouraged myself to look at colleges and go to the common app and read the essay prompts. I have also gone on sites that say “the do’s and don’t of college essays” and most contain the similar topics of what not to write about.

Like any essay, the college essay requires time and lots of planning. I believe that to have a really good essay you must have a really bad idea, such as an event in life that you don’t believe to be the most interesting topic for a college essay. But that’s exactly what a college essay is supposed to be, original to you.

I believe what makes a successful college essay is something original and exiting to you. If you write about how you overcame the outbreak of COVID-19 when it didn’t affect you directly or within someone in your family, it won’t be useful for the readers to be involved and hooked into your essay, especially knowing that there are more than a hundred people across the world who might have written about the same topic. To have a successful college essay you need to find a special moment in YOUR life that shaped you to become the person you are today, you need the person who is reading your essay to get to know YOU. What makes you special? They know the things you achieved throughout high school, they want to know who you are behind those grades and school activities. What makes you unique? The answers to these questions are the thing that makes you the perfect person for them to accept into their college.

You are competing against thousands of students across the world for the same opportunity. Your college essay needs to prove that you are one in a million, and that uniqueness is exactly what will make a college essay successful.

My closest friend, Gabrielle Djomo, moved to Katy last year. She would have been a part of my English class had she not moved this year, which makes a little upset because this would have been the first class we shared after five years of never sharing a class together. Gabby and I haven’t gotten a lot of time to see each other even though we text almost every day, but because of COVID-19 we have gotten time to facetime and talk a lot more which is a pro for me in this current situation.

One Sunday night during quarantine, Gabby and I decided to watch After. This movie was based on the Wattpad book, we had both briefly read the book before the movie came out, and it was… bad. Gabby and I tend to watch really bad films just to laugh about the plot or the acting. When we began watching After we would laugh at the least funny parts of the movie because of the way the main guy would get into an unnecessary fight, or at how bad his British accent was. After finishing that movie, we began this movie called Be Somebody, we became frustrated because we spent an hour and twenty-six minutes waiting for a kiss that never happened. It’s hard to explain what makes this so funny. Gabby and I have this instant connection and we share many inside jokes, therefore talking to each other could make us burst out laughing for no apparent reason.

Talking to Gabby during this tough time is extremely helpful because she is someone I can tell anything to. What everyone needs right now is a person that you can count on to make you laugh, and I am extremely grateful to have that person.

If I were too choose to live in any fictional world I would live in the dystopian post-apocalyptic nation of Panem, from the Hunger Games. I find it interesting how the people in Panem, such as Katniss and her friends find the strength to live in their world that is very sad to imagine living at. Very different from our community now and with lack of technology and food, visible struggles of finding food and getting through their day by surviving.

You can see the control that the Capitol has over the twelve poor districts, you can see the mistreatment of the people who live in each district and how each person has their personal struggles.

When Katniss volunteers to take the place of her little sister in the annual Hunger Games you can see the fear surrounding everyone in the same district as her, but when they reach the games I find myself compelled to know how far someone will go in order to survive. Given the chance I would participate in the games because I am a very competitive person and I would like to test how far I could get in the games, although I don’t like the idea of loosing, or dying.

This fictional world is one of many that I would like to be a part of, for example, another fictional world would be Virginia Falls, from The Vampire Diaries. I grew up watching the show and I was at a phase were I hoped to be a vampire (I was like 12 okay, don’t judge me). But having the physical ability to compel people in doing something that would only benefit me, and being strong as well as extremely fast sounds like a great deal to me. Let’s not forget about the part of being immortal, I can only imagine the things I could do with all of that time.

However, I have a comparison, the current events happening in the world with COVID-19 feel as if we were living in a fictional dystopian world right now, but more modern than we could have ever imagined. To me, this experience feels surreal and is something I could have never envisioned our world going through. But COVID-19 has made me feel a lot closer to strangers all across the planet, because we are all going through similar struggles to fight this virus off even though we are miles apart from each other, we’re all in this together.

P.S. I miss you, Mrs. Sword and can’t wait to go back to your class!

Before reading this article, I greatly enjoyed the novel yet I was not familiar and did not know F. Scott Fitzgerald’s background or why and how he came up with this well-know “American Novel”. After reading the article I was able to learn many new things about Fitzgerald and what prompted him to write his most famous novel, as well as how I learned his struggles similar to Jay Gatsby’s.

I learned how Fitzgerald’s inspiration was due to his personal life problems as he “was deemed too poor to be considered a suitor”. Yet with his publishing of his first novel he was able to marry one of his love interests, Zelda Sayre. This reflects a lot with Gatsby and his story in relation to his personal struggles due to the label of being poor and the lack of fortune that would find him due to that same label.

I also learned from this article that Fitzgerald was adored by many famous writers after the publishing of the Great Gatsby, yet many critics were judgmental about the American novel that raised millions. This article provided and allowed me to further understand The Great Gatsby, yet I am still trying to figure out what the cover of the woman means behind the blue background, although the article provided a brief explanation of how it might signify Daisy, and I don’t disagree.

The article provides a variety of listed facts about background of the Great Gatsby, and although I wish I had come across this before reading the novel, I am glad I got a chance to read it due to the depth in analyzation that this article has provided me.

In today’s society we have been provided with a great amount of knowledge thanks to the technology around us. Many of us watch movies or shows that are always meant to entertain an audience and to potentially create an impact. I believe this is why the movie industry is gigantic and will keep growing to make films that can make someone see the world a different way.

Many films around the world have taken hard topics such as homosexuality, racism, addiction, or suicide. All of the issues happening in our world gives many directors the opportunity to show such topics through film and entertain people, in which many get a big audience. However as impactful as the film industry is trying to be, they are failing to get people to be aware of such matters, instead focusing on the small, irrelevant points.

I am a big fan of many films or shows that can allow me to relate to the topics being spoken of, additionally allowing me to be aware of something that I did not know was a problem in our society. I am extremely open minded but I am aware that some people are not, which makes it harder for them to take such awareness factors seriously. Films such as Call Me By Your Name, Beautiful Boy, Green Book, The Hate You Give and many other known movies that try to bring recognition to hard themes, many ignore and Postman said in the title of one of the chapters in his novel, many say “Now…This”, which refers to the ignorance and short attention spam that many have towards important issues in the world.

Directors who film movies to bring awareness to an important issue should not be aiming to win an Academy Award, instead should be putting their effort into allowing and helping others to show that many of the factors shown in films is not fiction. Instead of judging someone’s acting style, or the color of their skin, or the way the look the public should dig deeper and come out of the movie theater with a new perspective in life and in new ways that they can help those in need.

Difficult issues should not be taken as a form of entertainment which can allow more action to be taken from everyone, we need to forget about small details in such films and realize how the whole film revolves all over what is happening in our society and the best ways to fix the problem. Which will allow us to become more aware of the importance of films rather than take them as just another part of the entertainment industry.

Let me begin with an honest opinion. I did not stay off my electronics for 24 hours. Do not get me wrong, I tried to plan a 24 hour period where I would have been available to stay off any electronics but the problem is, most of the time I had to use a phone, computer, or my television. I could have tried harder, but I will further explain my reasoning of not finishing this task later on, first I want to tell you a story.

For this winter break, my mom and I went to New York for New Years. I want to start off with saying that the 24 hour drive had my acne extremely irritated. When we got the city that never sleeps (technically we stayed in New Jersey and made our way to Manhattan through the PATH subway, really convenient if you ever decide to visit this state) the lights were everywhere, big screens everywhere you looked and for the first time I didn’t have the desire to be looking at my phone for every five minutes. Which made me come up with my theory: we are addicted (at least in cstx) because there are no new things to do. Sure we have restaurants, movie theaters, and at least three other sources of entertainment. But New York City was surrounded with new things to do, which of course, is not surprising at all.

On New Year’s Eve around midnight my phone had died (due to the path search for locations and the time that I used to take pictures) my mom and I stopped at a nice coffee shop because we felt like drinking hot cholate, this by far is the best hot chocolate I have ever tried, let me get to my point. I have never walked into a coffee shop, ordered something, sat down and relax WITHOUT looking at my phone, I understand that it was dead, but I did not feel the need to stare at my phone or wanted to.

I truly believe that many of the reasons why we have become so addicted to our electronics is due to the fact that we (at least here in bryan/college station or most small cities in the world) don’t have the form of entertainment that can make us walk away from the technology of today.

Now, the reason why I could not complete this challenge as I would have wanted to was due to the fact that I have gotten so used to the usage of technology in my school and my source of communication within my parents when I am not at home. Every time I drive myself to school my mom requires me to send her a text message to make sure that I got to school safely, same thing when I’m heading home. A text message or a phone call is our only source of communication when we are away from each other. In school I use my computer for my APUSH class for note taking, because writing really fast makes my hand cramp up and I cannot retain all of the information that he says in my head for too long, which is why I take notes with my computer making it faster and efficient for me. In half of my classes most teachers use their smartboards, which I say would count as a screen which uses technology as well.

As much as I would have liked to stay off of technology for 24 hours it was almost impossible for me, which tells me a lot about our society of today and how technology has taken a huge part of our lives. I’m kind of surprised that I wasn’t able to take on this challenge, and hope that I can be able to tackle it another day.

Let me begin by saying that I am not the person who gets mad over specific stuff that people do physically. What affects me more would be ways that people might act, which affects me emotionally more than anything.

I extremely dislike when people tell me something that makes me extremely happy, only for the next day for them to begin ignoring and treating me a whole different way, many would come to give a name to this definition which is, “acting fake”. I am an extremely kind person to anyone, even without knowing them, and I will be generous and accepting to anyone, especially my close friends and family members. However, when I sense that friends of mine are keeping something away from me, or I notice that they are acting a different way that does not suit me well, it ends up hurting me emotionally. This would be the reason why I’m very careful with choosing people who I want to get close to, because it pushes my buttons when people maintain stuff away from me, as well as spreading rumors and assuming false information about me. I like to keep good people close to my life because I believe that they end up making a difference to my day by making me happier and healthier.

I don’t get affected by many things but I want to have appreciative people in my life who are honest and loyal. This would be one of the many reason why I love both of my dogs very much, because I know that they will love me unconditionally and will stay by my side at any cost.

I am thankful for many things in my life, and I am very glad that I have special people, and other many things that I have the chance to be thankful for.

I am thankful to have such loving friends in my life. I don’t know how I would be able to get through high school if it wasn’t for the friends that I have the ability to go to school and study with, they truly make my day a lot better. Along with that, I am thankful for the education that I am able to get, knowing that many people in the world struggle with getting a good education, so I am thankful that I have the ability to learn and pursue.

Lastly, I am thankful for my loving family. I don’t know where I would be if it weren’t for them, for my mother who is always there for me and for my father who would do anything to make me happy. For my brother also, who although can sometimes be a pain in the butt, I wouldn’t have asked for anyone as annoying as he is. But most of all I am thankful for my two lovely doggies, Kronus our baby Doberman, and our beloved Alice who has been with us for almost seven years.

I am thankful for all the good things in my life, and for the many good things yet to come.

Not many have the privilege to be educated in the world, but everyone knows the meaning of being educated, and often describe education as intelligence and base of knowledge. Reaching high school, graduating, applying to a college and getting accepted takes a lot of hard work and focus in your classes and extra-curriculars. Reaching college and being accepted means that you are going to enter a different level of education where there are a variety of college classes awaiting for you and a variety of students wanting to discuss real-life topics that could pertain to your views in life.

Being exposed to ideas that could make teenagers, especially high school and college level students feel uncomfortable can be beneficial to the student. Learning and being exposed to ideas that have sense to them, such as school shootings, rape, religion and certain topics that make others want to argue or even make them want to walk out of a lesson is exactly what education should be. In my English class we were exposed to the “Sandyhook Promise Back To School” commercial, to say that it was disturbing would be an understatement. After the commercial the whole class had gotten pretty silent and was just taking in what they had been exposed to, although this could have triggered some people this is the type of education that a school needs, because we are people in the real life world and we need to be exposed to these triggering factors early in to learn.

Education needs to handle real-life problems and to speak about them, professors need to educate their students by placing and exposing them in a situation that could make them uncomfortable. The teenager will be exposed to these certain ideas eventually, but will be more beneficial to them being exposed to triggering, uncomfortable situations at an early stage of life due to the fact that a professor can educate the student to look at the situation in different perspectives and provide them with different solutions. Education should be meant to prepare you for the outside world which is why disturbing conversations and lessons such as the World War II are necessary for us to grow as not just students but as human beings.