Matthew G
About me
Hello, my name is Matthew G and I am a 13 year old middle school student in 8th grade. I love to do many things but the two biggest ones have to be sports and video games. My most favorite sport is basketball i have been playing basketball since i was five years old and its something where i can escape from the world and my problems, also its fun. And video games like most middle school boys video games is all we do. Not only is it a place where we can distract ourselves but also where we can connect with our friends and play a fun competitive game.
Sports
Like i mentioned i play basketball. Its something i love to do but basketball is not the only sport I like to play. I also like trying new things for example football. You see i always knew how to throw a football and catch a football but i never understood the sport. So many rules and flags and like what is a first down? So i never really understood until we started playing football outside in the grass during lunch my good friend Mario like me with basketball loved football and has been playing it for the longest time. So it was the only thing we could play and i wanted to try it out so he told me all about it but i still couldn’t understand as good as i wanted to so i watched many videos and games and eventually bought a game, madden 20 which taught me believe it or not about the rules and flags and downs in football. So here goes my brief description of football, football is a sport composed of downs or plays in one drive or possession. You have a total of 4 downs and your objective is to get multiple first downs each 10 yards away from each other to eventually score a touchdown. Their are 2 main ways to do this by running the ball or throwing the ball and the penalties are called flags where it is when the defense or offense do something your not able to do like the penalties for offside or being on the other side of the starting point is the offense gains yards if they accept the penalty or usually nothing happens if they decline but it all depends on the penalty. So that was my description on football.
My Favorite Memory
My favorite memory is something at first hard to think of but the harder and harder I think one memory always pops up. And that’s the memory I have of when me and my basketball team at the time won the semi finals to go to the finals. It was a big game that we couldn’t lose. If we lost we went home but if we one we would of gone to the finals which was all of our goals. We knew the teams strengths and weaknesses and we knew are team was superior by a long shot. But you could never beat nerves. We were all so nervous we got on the court and our starting five went on the court. It was me the PG Jeremiah our SG Saul our SF Andre our PF and Kelly our C. We didn’t have the best starting five in the league but we had the best big three. Me Andre and Kelly dominated. Kelly was an elite sharpshooter who had height and strength to his advantage not only that but he was good at defense and rebounds and could play in the post. Andre was dedicated not only the fastest on the team but the most dominant a elite slasher who could finish over anyone and combined with his strength and dedication no one would get in his way. And finally theirs me. I was the leader and hype man of that team not the tallest but speed strength a good shot handles and most importantly my vision of the court and ability to read the defense and find gaps is where i was specialized at. I was a elite play-maker and slasher with the ability to create my own shot and had amazing passing. And it was the final seconds of the third quarter and i remember shooting a full court shot and swishing it in ti get the lead 56-53. We took the team on our back and ended up winning. It made me so happy because it was going to be the first time I ever went to the championship in
Can You learn to be Happier?
The possibility of learning to be happy does exists, this is possible due to the fact that happiness is something anyone can achieve even people with mental disorders like depression can reach a state of happiness by simply doing what they love or discovering something new that makes them happy. For example, Me myself wasn’t such a happy person because I didn’t have any friends but then I started talking to people and became friends which was a new discovery. Also, I discovered a sport that would later on become my hobby and something I love to do which was basketball. So not only did I find happiness by finding something new but also by doing something I love. According to “Why learn to be Happy?” by BBC it mentions that you can achieve happiness by doing simple stuff like not looking at social media, doing activities, meditating, be with your family and friends, etc. This shows that it is possible for anyone to be happy and that you can learn to become happy.
“This I believe Statement”
“You shouldn’t have to act as someone your not, but should be accepted for who you are”-By: Matthew Gonzales. This is my I believe statement and how it came to me is a story. Up until probably fourth grade I did not have a lot of friends. I had no clue why i had none and then i decided to change my personality because I noticed that every other boy had a cool personality and was very mean or hard and they had a lot of friends. So I changed my personality and became like everyone else. This brung me friends and friendships that i have even now but it had a big consequence in my life for elementary school. I became hated from pretty much every girl because I was so mean and rejected every girl. I did not want to talk to girls and if they talked to me I would make fun of them and just not want to socialize. This went on for the rest of fourth grade and all of 5th grade but in 6th grade is where it got bad. I tried to talk to girls in a flirtatious way wile still trying to be cool. But because i was so used to being mean I couldn’t talk to them not only because they didn’t want to talk to me but because I would just be mean. But I kept trying to talk to them and this lead to a girl liking me. She was in my class and before i knew she liked me I had never talked to her but I knew who she was. She tried talking to me in class and in lunch but i didn’t like her I liked another girl so i was mean to her and made fun of her just because I didn’t like her. I never took the chance to talk to her and get to know her because i didn’t care if she liked me I liked someone else. She was persistent in trying to talk to me and even though I was mean to her she still wanted to talk. But what really changed my mindset was when the girl i liked and the girl that liked me said that I was too mean and when I asked the girl that liked me why people don’t like me she said I was too mean and that I need to be more chill and nice. So I had whole summer break to think about myself and so going into seventh grade I changed my whole attitude to just be myself and stop acting or trying to be cool and just be nice and myself. In conclusion, I believe to be yourself and not act as someone else.
Gringo
Gringo: (in Spanish-speaking countries and contexts, chiefly in the Americas) a person, especially an American, who is not Hispanic or Latino. This to many hispanic people is used as a offensive word used to describe Americans or white people. This may not seem as such a offensive word or something to hurt someone but to me it is. I am a chicano or a Mexican American my mother is from Culiacán Sinaloa a city in Mexico and my dad is from San Diego CA. Because of this it makes me a Mexican American or a chicano as many people refer too. San Diego is known for its wide variety of Chicanos with most of its population chicanos and a park in downtown San Diego named after its Chicano culture. But when people think of Mexican they think brown skin brown eyes dark brown hair skinny short. But im the complete opposite of all that. Im white skinned with blue eyes and dirty blonde hair many people say im white and the worst of all my fellow chicanos call me gringo. Like I said before many people don’t think too much of this word but I like to accept my culture and where I come from yet people don’t believe that I am Mexican and it hurts. It hurts to know that you aren’t accepted to your culture because of your skin color and your appearance. The worst part of all is that my family is all dark skinned like my brother and my dad and my mom and sister are white skinned but have brown eyes and my mom is the one from Mexico. Im the only one in my family besides my two grandmas who have blue eyes and blonde hair. Especially in my school where the whole population is basically chicano i get called gringo a lot and question for being Mexican. Not only in school but in public many Mexicans will ask for help or something and ask if I spek spanish or will make fun of me in spanish or say something in english thinking that I don’t speak spanish. It frustrates me because I know how to speak spanish and I have Mexican heritage but because of my appearance people question it.
Chicano Park in San Diego. The park, built under a highway overpass, has become a symbol of the Chicano rights movement. It was built after residents of the surrounding Mexican-American neighborhood occupied the land in 1970 and demanded a park after officials reneged on promises to build one there.
What I learned about my career
The Ideas that were presented to me connect to what I already knew about my career was that I knew that I wanted to either be in the business realm or in the enterprise realm. Also, I knew that if I had the option to look into stocks and stuff like that to invest I would. The ideas in the CA Career Zone and in the article connect to the ideas about my future to what I already and because like I said i already wanted to be in those realms and in that sort of job. According to my California Career Zone summary it shows that my top three careers were conventional, enterprising and realistic explaining connection I had with the jobs. Some new Ideas I got for my future were that I could look into law or even artistic or social careers. Something that is still challenging to me is that im still debating between careers weather it be business or real estate or investing in stock or properties I cant decide. Also, what school I would go to such as what college because if I could pick between many which hopefully I can I wouldn’t know which one to choose.
What will I do After College? And with what I Know About my Career
So the question is know that I know about my career and what i connect too what will I do after college and with my future. Well im planning on focusing on the career of business and/or investing in properties or real estate. This is what I plan to study and get a degree in business and most likely work for a good business where i can hopefully eventually make 100+ dollars a year. So once I get out of college I plan on doing that but if this doesn’t work then I will look into starting my own business where I could start a food business or maybe even a clothing line or something. That wouldn’t be ideal simply because thats not what I like to do but if it supports for myself and my family then I would do it. Also, with a business major I could manage someone or try and be someones agent or I would try and sell properties. I would do this because you make good money and selling houses and being a real estate agent are good jobs.
What I learned from 8th grade
Some of the experiences and writings that motivated me this year were actually the monster project. Now this may come to a surprise to my fellow students and you may ask why the monster project? Well you see the monster that I studied was Jason Voorhees which from a horror standpoint is a good monster but I think his backstory and has story as a kid is very sad. Basically to explain Jason was a deformed child that got bullied and beaten for being different than the rest of the kids at camp and eventually got thrown into a lake while the counselors weren’t looking out for him because they were busy having sex. This changed my perspective and my thinking amongst people who are perceived as different and made me accept them more and be more friendly with everyone. Some struggles I had in 8th grade was understanding and analyzing books. I think that this was one of my struggles because I cant focus and i get bored of the stories. I overcame these challenges by finding and trying to relate to things in the book and understand what the author was trying to say or the message. Some new questions that arose from the school year was where do authors find these messages? And how were genere of writing created? Some struggles that I still have are analyzing what authors are trying to show us and understanding their message. Some new insights I have are that through writing, poems pictures, etc. you can understand people and their problems and connect with them on a deeper level.
Matthew G 