Making the best with what I have

Coming up from a rough neighborhood and tackling the problems that came my way, I never thought I would be the person that I am today. I found myself growing into a leader and never a follower. In almost every situation I always wanted to be the leader of the pack because I found myself to be a great motivator of any group I was a part of. Saying that, I do think that is one of my growth areas because I would love everyone around me to be a great leader as I’ve grown to be. 

As I become more of an adult, my goals and expectations of myself are growing. I never want to be at a place where I’m just settled, I want to continue to grow and help others around me to exceed their limitations in their life. What motivates me is that I know that I can help others as soon as I help myself get to the place I need to be to help them. In a way, I think I live my life to help other people because when people are happy, I think I’m at my happiest when I’m helping others victoriously achieve their goals.

What really helped me in becoming the person that I am today and having the motivation, courage, and leadership skills is volunteering my time to different committees and continually involving myself with others. I would love to see myself owning my own event planning company just to see people smile and know that I put that smile on their face.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Staying current with events

Facebook is forever changing and constantly trying to improve to keep people engaged and interested in the very popular website. (Facebook Change)

Facebook wants users to “merge their online and offline lives.” Why? Why do people need to have all of that information online? I don’t want anyone flooding my news feed with things that happened 50 years ago. I mean, I understand that Facebook is a site for people that know each other to stay connected, but really?

Personally, I feel that the more simple a website is, the more people would want to use it. My reasoning for this is, there are a ton of people that would love to use Facebook, but the technicality of the site is driving people away.

The developers may think some of the changes are "cool," but as a persistent user, I personally don't like when the site is changing every couple of months. It really frustrates me when I'm still trying to adjust to the changes they made before.

I also feel that instead of them trying to randomly make changes, they should reach out to the average Joe to see what the Facebook team could do to improve their website. Without people, there would be no Facebook.

Saying that, I think Facebook made more than a lot of people mad when they made these current changes to the news feed because there was nothing wrong with it in the first place! Why fix something that isn't broke? They JUST made changes with the Facebook chat, why can't we as a Facebook community get used to that first?

The Facebook team should be focusing more on controlling the over load of spam that's been flooding peoples wall instead of making things more difficult with the site!

Look at things through my eyes

Things at my school weren't that bad. I actually loved my high school and the support that I had from everyone around me. I didn't go to a regular high school, I went to a high school through Job Corps. The teachers there was very hands on and very willing to help the students. I took advantage to the help because I wasn't used to getting so much help and I wanted to make sure I learned everything they were teaching.

There were times I got distracted by the things that were going on. I wanted to hang out and not do class work because it wasn't catching my attention at the time. Most of the students around me were really focused and determined because of where they came from. Sometimes I would take their energy and focus and apply it to my situation to get done with my work.

You taught me, now it's time to teach myself.

Growing up, I was mainly around my sister and cousin. My sister uses profanity heavily. I think over the years, from being around her and others who cursed constantly, I just picked up on it fairly easily. Thinking about it, I really feel that my parents had a lot to do with my cursing habits as well because my mother curses more than a sailor on a great day! With my mother cursing so much, I developed some of her talking patterns. When I got around my friends and certain family members, it was almost as if I have no filter to my “special” vocabulary.

As I entered middle school, I started to develop a vocabulary outside of my usual AAVE (African American Vernacular English). Some noticed that I started to speak more "proper" and used bigger words that most did not understand. A great majority of my friends had to pull out a dictionary when I was speaking because they did not understand the words I was using. At that point in my life, I was really focused and determined in school, thanks to my wonder English teachers.

When I entered high school, a lot of my focus and determination was gone. A lot of my vocabulary and love for learning new words started diminishing as the days went by. I felt I no longer stood out from the other students, so I went back what I knew and that was my AAV English. Now that I'm trying to get a job in a more professional setting, I wish I would have stayed in school and continued to build my vocabulary. I'm very happy to say that my passion for learning new words is slowly coming back to me.