Connor Jennings
Michelle Clark
9th Grade Humanities
9/7/2015
Culture of Me
After 14 years of seemingly fruitless, desperate, pleading, my dream of getting a dog was finally answered. It was the beginning of winter vacation, and I had all but lost all hope about getting one. Ever since I could remember, I had frequently bugged my parents about a dog, and their answer was always the same: we’ll think about it, which as every kid knows is just a grown up way of saying no. At this point I had decided that, as long as I lived with my parents, I would never own a dog, so when my parents called my siblings and me downstairs I assumed we were in trouble. My sister, never one to leave things up in the air, asked if we were in trouble. My parents responded no, clearing my mind of any doubt as to what this family meeting was about; my mom would do this often, she would act super excited about something, describe it as this “amazing gift”, and then it would turn out to be something utterly boring like cloths or a tooth brush. When my mom said we would be getting a dog, I didn’t know how to react. My first thought was that I should faint, like in the cartoons, or that I should jump up and down and scream. Instead, I stupidly sat on the couch staring blankly into the distance wondering how to respond. The first dog we laid eyes upon when deciding which one to adopt was a small dog with a huge smile and fur the color of a lightly toasted marshmellow. This was Clover and everyone in my family fell in love with her.
Getting Clover brought about a big change in me. Before I got Clover I was rather pessimistic; I saw a successful future as something nigh unattainable, something that I could try to obtain never truly have a chance at. This was mostly because of my mom and her friends, who would meet up with each other every few months and discuss their lives. None of them were very optimistic about their kids futures, or at least they didn’t seem optimistic. I knew that they were probably just trying to act cool in front of their friends, and while my mom never said anything negative about me, the crummy futures described during their post 9 o’clock chats really affected my view of the world. The effects weren't all bad, I made an antagonist out of the things that I heard and this helped me strive to do better in school so that I could prove everyone wrong, but that didn’t make me happy. I wasn’t depressed, I just felt rather glum and futureless if I wasn’t distracted by my friends or games. However, when Clover became the newest member of our family, all of that changed. She was not very smart, and didn’t have a great future ahead of her, but she was always happy and smiling and asking for belly rubs. She was the first entity that I felt like I would do anything for, and she changed my outlook on life. She showed me that all you need to succeed and be happy is a positive attitude. People had told me that before, but because none of them had a positive attitude all the time, I found it really hard to believe them. Clover’s fun-loving attitude helped me see that being positive and working hard really is all you need.
I have heard stories of success and happiness all my life, my cousins and aunts and uncles are all successful in their fields but before Clover I saw all that as something I needed to live up to, not something I could learn from. However, now that Clover has given me a more positive outlook on life, I know that I can learn from my family and know what I need to do to become successful. My parents are both the youngest in their families so all of my cousins are at least 3 years older than me. A huge fear I often get caught up on is that, with the amount of stuff you need to learn to master a field of study so you can expand it, and the increasing cost of college, I fear that my generation will be the one that doesn’t make it. I fear that everyone will have so much debt and so little time to research because of that debt that scientific discovery will slow to a hault. However, seeing that all of my cousins have made it through college and are going of to become great artists, scientists, teachers, and businessmen I feel much more optimistic about my own future. While all of my cousins inspire me, I feel the most connected with my cousin Elizabeth. She is incredibly intelligent and is currently studying at Yale so I really look up to her, but she also had similar problems to me when she was my age, like perfectionism, so I know that if I work just as hard I can be just as successful. Elizabeth isn’t just the person who I connect most with, she is also who I want to be like when I am in college, because she is unbelievably smart, has amazing study habits, and doesn’t get upset about anything!
After college, I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t see any problems in aiming high, so my current goal is to work for NASA, but literally all of my cousins changed their minds in some way about what they wanted to do in their lives during college, so I know that that's not definitive. The two most successful people in my life, in my opinion, are my uncles Dave and Mark. Dave works for NASA as an astronomer, and he gets to travel around the world and look through telescopes. Mark, after many years of hard work, became the owner of a veterinary clinic. It is the only clinic in the area so it pretty much runs itself. He uses all his spare time and money to pursue cool projects, like building his own two-person plane. I’m not sure which future I see myself having, but I do know that if I work hard and use the resources available to me I can have a great future.
Michelle Clark
9th Grade Humanities
9/7/2015
Culture of Me
After 14 years of seemingly fruitless, desperate, pleading, my dream of getting a dog was finally answered. It was the beginning of winter vacation, and I had all but lost all hope about getting one. Ever since I could remember, I had frequently bugged my parents about a dog, and their answer was always the same: we’ll think about it, which as every kid knows is just a grown up way of saying no. At this point I had decided that, as long as I lived with my parents, I would never own a dog, so when my parents called my siblings and me downstairs I assumed we were in trouble. My sister, never one to leave things up in the air, asked if we were in trouble. My parents responded no, clearing my mind of any doubt as to what this family meeting was about; my mom would do this often, she would act super excited about something, describe it as this “amazing gift”, and then it would turn out to be something utterly boring like cloths or a tooth brush. When my mom said we would be getting a dog, I didn’t know how to react. My first thought was that I should faint, like in the cartoons, or that I should jump up and down and scream. Instead, I stupidly sat on the couch staring blankly into the distance wondering how to respond. The first dog we laid eyes upon when deciding which one to adopt was a small dog with a huge smile and fur the color of a lightly toasted marshmellow. This was Clover and everyone in my family fell in love with her.
Getting Clover brought about a big change in me. Before I got Clover I was rather pessimistic; I saw a successful future as something nigh unattainable, something that I could try to obtain never truly have a chance at. This was mostly because of my mom and her friends, who would meet up with each other every few months and discuss their lives. None of them were very optimistic about their kids futures, or at least they didn’t seem optimistic. I knew that they were probably just trying to act cool in front of their friends, and while my mom never said anything negative about me, the crummy futures described during their post 9 o’clock chats really affected my view of the world. The effects weren't all bad, I made an antagonist out of the things that I heard and this helped me strive to do better in school so that I could prove everyone wrong, but that didn’t make me happy. I wasn’t depressed, I just felt rather glum and futureless if I wasn’t distracted by my friends or games. However, when Clover became the newest member of our family, all of that changed. She was not very smart, and didn’t have a great future ahead of her, but she was always happy and smiling and asking for belly rubs. She was the first entity that I felt like I would do anything for, and she changed my outlook on life. She showed me that all you need to succeed and be happy is a positive attitude. People had told me that before, but because none of them had a positive attitude all the time, I found it really hard to believe them. Clover’s fun-loving attitude helped me see that being positive and working hard really is all you need.
I have heard stories of success and happiness all my life, my cousins and aunts and uncles are all successful in their fields but before Clover I saw all that as something I needed to live up to, not something I could learn from. However, now that Clover has given me a more positive outlook on life, I know that I can learn from my family and know what I need to do to become successful. My parents are both the youngest in their families so all of my cousins are at least 3 years older than me. A huge fear I often get caught up on is that, with the amount of stuff you need to learn to master a field of study so you can expand it, and the increasing cost of college, I fear that my generation will be the one that doesn’t make it. I fear that everyone will have so much debt and so little time to research because of that debt that scientific discovery will slow to a hault. However, seeing that all of my cousins have made it through college and are going of to become great artists, scientists, teachers, and businessmen I feel much more optimistic about my own future. While all of my cousins inspire me, I feel the most connected with my cousin Elizabeth. She is incredibly intelligent and is currently studying at Yale so I really look up to her, but she also had similar problems to me when she was my age, like perfectionism, so I know that if I work just as hard I can be just as successful. Elizabeth isn’t just the person who I connect most with, she is also who I want to be like when I am in college, because she is unbelievably smart, has amazing study habits, and doesn’t get upset about anything!
After college, I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t see any problems in aiming high, so my current goal is to work for NASA, but literally all of my cousins changed their minds in some way about what they wanted to do in their lives during college, so I know that that's not definitive. The two most successful people in my life, in my opinion, are my uncles Dave and Mark. Dave works for NASA as an astronomer, and he gets to travel around the world and look through telescopes. Mark, after many years of hard work, became the owner of a veterinary clinic. It is the only clinic in the area so it pretty much runs itself. He uses all his spare time and money to pursue cool projects, like building his own two-person plane. I’m not sure which future I see myself having, but I do know that if I work hard and use the resources available to me I can have a great future.