8/21 - Living up to a cultural expectation

 In “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, the mother provides her daughter with numerous expectations about how a girl should behave. Reflect on a specific gender expectation within your culture that has been challenging for you to navigate. Then describe one clear example of this expectation and explain why it has been difficult for you. Keep your response concise, vivid, and focused on your personal experience.

Summary: While my family is willing to like western and northern like culture, my mom and dad still want me to embrace my Mexican heritage, which they ultimately embrace more than their love for western and northern like culture, which includes speaking Spanish and eating Mexican foods; while they have caused me trouble in the past, I’ve still been able to understand Spanish from my family and others and of course eat my family’s Mexican foods.

Reflection: Ultimately, I choose the culture I want to be in and in that culture, I’ll be me, no matter the expectation.

8/20 - Inspiration for my “I Too” poem

 

Summary: In my “I Too Am” poem, I say that what I truly am is a resilient person, not someone who gives in to someone’s forceful choices. Or someone who easily quits, or ever quits. The inspiration I took was from many characters from fiction who take on the same role, which is why I love to admire them and use them in this example.

Conclusion: The process of making this though was very hard, it was difficult to come up with the the wording of this poem, but to keep true to the theme of my poem, I persisted and wrote my great poem.

8/18 - Something out of the ordinary I have done

Write about a time you did something completely out of the norm; what was it and how did the others react?

Summary: I haven’t used my phone for essentially the rest of my school years, mainly my freshman, sophomore, and senior years, which should sound like something students should do normally under Georgia’s new phone law, but people seem to sneak it around in class mid lecture or do it when the class is talkative, or just use it the lunch or library, yet I wouldn’t do that as to not risk my phone being taken away, plus, I like sitting in silence. The others, who are my peers in the school, don’t seem to care .

Conclusion: Georgia’s newer phone banning law seems to be very ignored by many students who are willing to take the risk of having their phones locked away, at least in this school, setting a social norm by students that one should try to use their phone, but I simply cannot take that risk and will not use it.

8/17/2026 - Felt lost

Describe a time you felt completely lost miss?

Summary: During the first days of my freshman year at Lakeside High School, I truly felt alone and did t know anyone there; it didn’t help that I came from a different middle school not one person ever knew about like Henderson. I didn’t know if I could’ve actually trusted anybody there, as it felt so exotic seeing different student groups and people making up my classes and lunch to the point that I had no idea if I could even end up remembering any friends I could’ve made in the school.

Conclusion: The way things were set up for me at that moment of August 2023, was truly a time to feel alone, and I wasn’t good at making friends either and similarly, I didn’t know if I’d like the teachers, or if they liked me back. I was inexperienced back then, so it truly set a isolated path for me in my freshman year.

8/14/2026 - Analysis of school preparation

"Analyze how you’ve adapted to the demands of this course over the past week, and evaluate one strength and one challenge you anticipate as we progress, justifying your insights with personal examples."

Summary: One strength I had with me across this week to meet with the demands of assignments is my resilience and my insight, I have to push through my sleepiness, my laziness, both of which tryout stop me from doing my work, and my insight like analyzing my assignments and classwork to learn how they work and how to complete them as fast as I can, all the while I listen to all the places instructions by my teacher. This is all to meet up with a higher standard I listed after my following years in high school where I just didn't work at all.

Conclusion: Always turn in your assignments as fast as you can and as best as you can, no matter what gets in your way.

8/13/2026 - Understanding someone's race

If someone tried to understand you using only your race, what important things would that person miss? Describe at least three other parts of your cultural identity that help make you who you are.

Summary: People would think that as my Mexican-American or Hispanic group as being hot-living people, basically meaning that we live in hot climates and love hot foods, which I do love to eat hot foods as the latter, but I also love cold foods to and I love living in colder places way more than hotter places. People would also think I love to play soccer all day, in which, I think of soccer as my least disliked sport in my opinion, it's not a high limit to pass, mainly because I don't like sports at all in any way. People would also assume I'd be a bad kid in every form, but I'm not, I am willing to act better and kinder.

Conclusion: To say the least, people should second-guess who they're categorizing in generalization based on their group's actions that they probably don't approve of themselves.

8/11/2026 - Parts of identity that influenced me to a degree

"Think about the different people, cultures, experiences, communities, interests, and traditions that have shaped who you are. What parts of your identity have had the greatest influence on the person you are today? Have you ever felt pressure to change, hide, or emphasize a part of yourself in order to fit in?"

Summary: Parts of my identity have influenced who I have been shaped now due to my past experiences with Hispanic students in middle school, where I see their behavior on only a few kids in my high school, essentially, it has been terrible dealing with them in the past and sort of affected how I viewed my own racial group for a short while, viewing us as people loud, repulsive, and liars that don't know how to learn from our mistakes, which made me embarrassed to ever talk or present myself in any of my classes in my first year of high school

Conclusion: But then I met some of my same racial peers in the same grade as me being very kind, respectful, and honest, making friends with most people they encountered, which made me finally present myself more and more through each year.

8/10/2026 - Differentiation of family tradition and culture

"Describe a meaningful family tradition unique to your culture and explain how it mirrors or contrasts with the cultural identity themes of expectations."

Summary: A meaningful family tradition my family has that contrasts from my main culture of Mexican-American is that we more quieter than our Mexican and Mexican-American friends & other related families, as in, were less to stand out more and stay in the background, mainly due to my family seeing ourselves and with the rest of other people, as normal people; we will always appreciate our identity as Mexican-Americans and Mexicans, but we won't think of our culture as better, we know each culture is just as diverse as ours. My family is also more willing to play and listen to 'north-western' music & song pieces, as well as watch 'north-western' movies & tv shows, than our general culture.

Reflection: This is why I love my family, we just love to live life regularly and see the uniqueness in others as a distinct uniqueness for each person; we also love to dive deep into other medias of differing culture as well.

3 goals for this year

    My three goals for this year is, one, to get a grade higher than a B at least, getting a grade specifically from 81 and above.
    My second goal is to try and finish all my classwork as early as I can, as sometimes I know I will make a mistake or something may intervene in finishing my classwork, but I will always try to make it up and finish it as early as I can to make the deadline on my assignments.
    My third and final goal is to use the topics and lessons from my classes in my life as a skill because I know it'd be useful at some point in my life.