Juarez 1
Fabian
Juarez
Dr.
Preston
Ap
English
2
June 2017
My Journey
“I found all of that in
the streets I just didn’t happen to find a gang. I found all of that within
myself but it was still in the streets.” -ENEM graffiti artist
Throughout the course of
this class I noticed my thoughts were being changed slowly but surely, they
did. For the first time, I was building connections to characters that were in
the stories. I would get into the stories so bad to the point where I wanted
more. I would see the number of pages left to read get smaller and smaller every
day and that would make me worry because it would barley be getting to the good
part and then I find out it’s almost over. When we read Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury I oddly saw myself in his character Montag. I saw how Montage
wasn’t afraid to go up against the system and he was willing to do anything to
get away from them taking his privilege of having a different view on
society. He lived in a world very like
mine in many ways especially the fact that going against the law is seen very
bad. Doing illegal activities doesn’t make you a bad person just as praying a
few times won’t guarantee you a spot in heaven. The worlds me and Montage live
in hide the true powers that everyone has, that everyone was born with.
Passion, love, perseverance, and things like that are all things that are
within everyone but it’s up to you to bring it out and it’s up to you to find
in what way you want to represent that. It’s also up to you how you take the
challenges life throws at you because of your desires. Montage had his whole
world against him but he still pushed through and in the end, it was worth it
because he was united with people just like him. He went from a world of being lonely
to now having people that understand him, but if he would of gave it up he
would have never even known about their existence. It was crazy to see how many
connections I made with this English and my life as a graffiti writer. For the
first time, I wasn’t looking as books as just books but now I was looking them representations
of the authors themselves just as I look at graffiti pieces not as just pieces
but also as the person who painted it. Both people spend their time in perfecting
what they write so that they can broadcast it to the world in a beautiful way
and in way everyone can understand it.
At first, I didn’t feel
connected to the class at all really. Most these people in this Ap class all do
extra-curricular like sports and clubs like that after school, but me, I just
like to go home. I know I don’t do that kind of stuff and that kind of put me
down in way and made me feel like on paper I wasn’t going to be better than
them. And then to top it off the man teaching the class is a Doctor which made me
want to express myself to him less because I figured he has probably seen it
all. I knew he was highly intelligent
and I was nowhere near his level, but so wasn’t anyone else in the class. I
would pay attention to everything that would be said in class and I would find
myself always in deep thought about the certain topics but I was always afraid
to speak up and say it. As time went on and as I stared to speak to Dr. Preston
more he taught me that it’s not about the numbers and grades but more about what
kind of a person you are and what you have to offer. I learned from him that
everyone has something to bring no matter how big or how little. This was
something I’ve had in mind for a long time but I never took in account for
myself. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby the main character Nick says
that he was taught to not judge people. I was raised the same and because of it
I got the chance to meet some off the coolest dudes in this planet. I would
have never expected that a 30-year-old would be the one doing all this amazing beautiful
art but I knew something was up when I caught him sneaking into the train yard.
Sometimes you really do have to see it to believe it and that’s the amazing
thing about people you never know what they can do because everyone has
untouched potential inside of them. I always had an understanding of these
things but I never real thought about it in a deeper way until I got to Dr. Preston’s
class.
So now my journey as a
hero is complete. I overcame, I conquered, and I changed. These are generally the thing that a hero does
in the story. In my eyes, I am a hero because I made it through so much without
fucking up my life and I had the option several times, but thankfully I chose
right. I embarked on my journey with few
items but on the return, I came back with handfuls of knowledge and wisdom. A
lot of ideas and thoughts have stuck to me and that was mainly because I’m a writer,
not the type that writes novel or anything, but the type that writes his name
and thoughts everywhere. I write my name on anything and everything
and it’s all for the public to see and to challenge them to think. We are taught to conform and to settle for
things and ideas that we are told on a daily day to day basis. We think of
these things as normal only because we just don’t know any better or its either
that people are afraid and they think they can’t do anything about the
situation. Everyone in this world is human so that never makes anyone better than
you. You might be different but no one can be better than you. You have the potential and tools all that is
left is for you to go to work.
Out of all the authors we
had a chance to know the one that appealed to me the most was Ralph Waldo
Emerson. At first, he seemed boring to
me but as I kept reading his essay on Self Reliance there were certain things
that just stood out from his writing. These things were all things that a
graffiti artist would say. It pretty much is a very sophisticated way of
presenting what graffiti is if you ask me. An author tries to piece together
his thoughts so that it can be presented in a way that makes sense to other
people. This brings me back to the idea that everything is remix, because it
is. Everything is art is a thought I developed on my own after realizing how
much work is put into perfecting things. An English teacher will say there is
an art to writing an essay just how a soccer coach could tell you there is an art
in scoring a goal.
Throughout the year, the
level of trust Dr. Preston bestowed upon us was very high and I see that it is
for a reason. It really was to separate the people that really want to learn from
the people just want to pass, I think. At times, I do believe that I earned,
but for the most part I didn’t honor it as well as I should have. As far as my
classmates go I believe that the majority of them did earn and honored the
trust that was given to us. There were several memorable moments from this
year, but the moment I remember the most was the first day of school when I heard
Dr. Preston cuss in class. At that moment, I was still kind of in shock because
you normally don’t hear stuff like that coming from your teachers but it was at
that moment when I thought to myself, “Hey, this guy might actually be kinda
cool”. I didn’t do as well as I wanted to this year but I was still able to
deliver somewhat at the end of the year. I didn’t become the “information sponge”
that I wanted to become at first. I’m still her thought and I luckily, I have
one more year to prove how bad I really do want it. There are several things in
life that you can’t learn in the classroom that you must learn by experience.
Surprisingly I found myself learning about life in my English class.
