13. Write a letter to your future college roommate introducing yourself and your background.

Hi, my name is Jose De Jesus Gutierrez; I was born in San Diego in the year 1995. I got a passion for math and for school. I like to watch soccer sometimes but I am not that big of a fan. I have made many mistakes trough out my life but I have learned from those mistakes and they have made me a better person. I love to eat and to try new things such as new hobbies or fun things. I don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs and I do not plan on doing any. Most of the time I watch television or sleep, but what I like the most is when I am with my family and my friends. I don’t like any specific type of music; it all depends on the lyrics, if I feel something extra in me when the song is over ,then I like that song. The most important thing I have in the world is the people I care about. I expect to have a good relationship with you and I hope that we can be good friends. I look forward to knowing you and I hope that we start up with the right foot.

14. Please describe your reactions/ideas to the following quote: "He does not possess wealth, it possesses him."

When I read the quote "He does not possess wealth, it possesses him.” I feel that the statement is true. I believe that the quote means that once a person becomes rich he does not think with the brain he thinks with the money. Sometimes rich people think that they aren’t like the average people; they think that they are more important and they see everyone else as savages. If they were caring and liked other people then their feelings go away and new feelings of hatred and superiority come as a replacement. Soon they are no longer humans, the think different, they act different and they look different. Once they have the money they can’t think of anything else; it is like he is under control of a spell and he just becomes cold. The person no longer possesses emotions they only have the wealth.

Sometimes the person begins to feel like he’s a god, he wants everything and whatever he does not have he tries to get no matter what. He will eventually do things that would make no human proud, actions that involve death and disaster. Once he is decided to obtain what he wants there is nothing to stop him. It is like if the person loses his heart and just replaces it with money. It does not matter how much that person already has, he will always want more and he will make sure that he gets it. For instance, if the person is a millionaire, the he will feel like the most important person in the world and will treat his employees like trash, if the rich person feels like he wants a special drink that is only made in china he better have it or someone would get fired. Being rich could be difficult because the greed can take over your mind.

15. What is the most valuable contribution you could make to a college campus? Explain.

The most valuable contribution that I could make to a college campus is going to that college and being the best student. I would try to be the best and by doing that I would show the world the potential of that college. That is the most valuable contribution that I could make to a college campus, other than that I hope the college campus helps me. I need a good college to help me achieve my goals and to help me get a good career. I would need to show that they made a good decision by choosing me to go to that specific college instead of choosing the next person on the list. I also need to keep going even after I leave that college so when I am a success a can look back and say, “ I went to that college”, and then hopefully when other people find out that I went to that college they would want to go there meaning that I gave the college a good reputation.

Another valuable thing that I would like to give a college campus would be a good environment. I would do this by working on the campus’ trees and other plants. I would like to show the college how having a good environment helps to have better students. At the same time I can be a good example for my colleges that are attending the college so that they can be more aware of the importance of the environment as well as the personal health. I would help everyone find the connection between health, environment and knowledge. Both this valuable gifts will help the college be a better campus encouraging the students to go study there and help to make the campus better. Everything is about setting examples, if I help by giving something valuable, hopefully most of the people that attend the college after me will try to do the same.

16. Explain a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dillema you have faced and its impact on you.

A significant experience that I went through is moving from sixth to seventh grade. As insignificant and small as it sounds it changed my life and how I viewed the world. When I was in sixth grade I was a kid, I could do anything I wanted and I could get away with it. However, once I entered middle school everything I knew just disappeared, no more running around for fun or playing toys, fun had to be about sports or videogames now. I was pressured to become a teenager when I was just a kid, what I thought was right all of a sudden was wrong. Being the smartest student seemed weird instead of something to be proud of. I went from being the smartest student in the class to a slacker who just copied work, I started failing tests that I knew I was capable of passing with an A plus. I became an average student, soon everything just did not matter as much, and life wasn’t about getting A’s anymore. Then it just took over me and I couldn’t control it, I tried to go back to the smart kid who did all his work and got A’s on all his tests but it became hard. An essay that would have taken me 45 minutes soon was taking me hours. Reading became torture, homework was like death, and school was just not the same. One day I woke up and I was already in eleventh grade and in about 12 hours I had to turn in an English assignment that I hadn’t even started. So right now I’m trying to finish my assignment and I know that if I don’t finish it is fine, because next time that I have an assignment I know I will finish it. I will try my best to turn nerd-mode back on..

17. Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.

A local issue of great concern to me is my school. The school is of great importance to me because it has been having several issues that have been affecting the school’s reputation. Since Mr. Ochoa had an incident and was removed from his position the school has been having incidents of greater impact to our school. The first important incident was when a football player from the school got sexually assaulted by about five other members of the football team. This rapidly became of great controversy because the school decided that the incident was horseplay. The school clearly tried to make the problem smaller by trying not to make it sound as bad as it actually was. However, instead diminishing the problem it made the problem bigger because many people felt insulted since the school made the conflict sound as if it was not that important.

Then about a month later a former teacher at the school was arrested for possession of methamphetamines. The investigation is still going on right now; however, the school’s reputation has already been damaged by the news. I am starting to worry if the school reputation can affect mine in the future. What if knowing that I attended this school makes me a bad candidate for attending a good university. Also, how would the community see all of us who attend the school? Most people make generalizations, this means that people think that all the students from Castle Park High School sexually assault people and are doing drugs. It is important that we as students try our best to show the world that we are not who they think we are. We need to show that we are capable of many great accomplishments and that the reputation that goes with the school does not affect us and who we are.

18. If you could choose two things to change about our high school campus, what would they be and why?

If I could chose two things to change about our high school campus they would be the staff that works on security and the food. I would mainly change the staff that works as security because the security we have now is not working. Mostly you can see the employees sitting down or just riding their golf carts. They do not do a good job because most of the time they are just slacking off. When it is finally time to get their job done they just act like they know what they’re doing and whomever is on their way just push them around. They end up being late on the scene and never catch the people who were involved in the problem. I would also change the food that is served during lunch. I do not even know why anyone would call that food. I don’t know how they make the pizza but at the end its just bread, meat and fat. If you were to squeeze the pizza you could probably fill up a gallon of milk with fat. The same goes for the bread sticks, they are just too greasy. It would be better if they were to change it back to how it was last year at least the spaghetti was good. Also, the burgers taste bed and the meat or chicken in the burger seem like if they weren’t even cooked right. Sometimes they give out salad but it is not even good and it only contains lettuce. The government should force the school to give students healthier food. Maybe it is not so important for the food to be healthier but it would be better if they gave out food in a better state. I can’t find any reason to why they would give the students such disgusting food.

19. Should school attendance be mandatory? In your answer, be sure to explore what the function of education is, and what our nation would look like if the masses were less educated.

I think school attendance should be mandatory because in most of the United States success is based on education. Everything works by tittles, your tittle determines which job you will be doing in the future and how much you will earn as a payment. The more education you have the better the tittle, thus attending school is of great importance. It is also important to be well educated in order to make the best and most beneficial decisions in your life. Going to school does not only teach you how to add or how to read, but it also shows you how to do research and how to be updated in the world problems. School teaches you what is going on around you and makes you a wiser person. Schools also help to develop social skills and the teacher help to give an example of how to be a better person. If the people in our nation were less educated the world would be a chaos. Education is not just about intelligence; it is also about having manners and knowing how to act in different scenarios. If humans weren’t educated then they would be no different from animals. However, the expectations of people would decrease affecting the entire nation. Uneducated people will end up working as doctors resulting in an increase on death rates. This would create a chain eventually eliminating all the educated people of the world transforming humans back into Neanderthals.