First+Semester+Final

After just a few months the very first semester of high school for Foothills 2015 class is finally coming to a close. Mostly my life has really changed, except for friends and career choices. Now after just a few months of high school I do feel a lot older, especially when I see those middle schoolers all trying to fit in with one another. Family life as well though has managed to change throughout the semester as well, such as my younger brother having problems with grades, younger sister being unable to control her temper, and older sister becoming angry whenever someone starts to talk about college, has made family life rather hectic.

On the page of academics I will say that I’m not doing as well as I would like to, usually hovering around a 3.5 GPA. Classes in themselves are definitely more intense than they were in middle school now that college is looming ahead of us. Some of the classes that I have a particular problem with would have to be biology and English, but English is no new problem. One of my favorite classes I would have to say is health, but thanks to Mr. Geib English too is a great class.P.E. as well is not a great as it was in middle school, now it’s more based on weight lifting and actually become fit.

To start off with my biology class with Mrs. Anderson who I have first period, its an ok class but not the best. Don’t get me wrong Anderson’s a great teacher, very smart, but biology happens to be very difficult with a great deal vocabulary, concepts, and functions of organisms. I feel I have done relatively well in her class and receiving just a B in the class. E.D.A. happens to be my second period with Mrs. Faulconer, which has turned to be quite a boring class and the name should be changed to College Education, because that’s basically all we do. Most of the assignments we’ve done after fall break have had to do one way or another with college, such as right now were doing a college presentation project where you deeply research a college and present it to the class. It didn’t go that great for me, I was forward to doing a report on the University of Washington or something in San Francisco, but with my luck they both got taken and I got stuck with Boston University. I have nothing against Boston; I just don’t care about their colleges because I have no plans on going to the east coast for college.

Health and Art are some of my favorite classes. First off, for third period I have health with Mrs. Ferris, it’s a good class and we watch a bunch of movies so I’m also able to rest up a bit. It’s also nice, because our class isn’t taken to seriously and we’re given little homework, so it’s easy to relax. For my fourth period I have art with Mr. Frazier, this to is a nice class to have, mostly we have due dates for projects long enough that it is possible to slack off for a day, catch up on homework for another class, or whatever else you need to do, once in a while. Another part that I enjoy about art is that most of the projects we have assigned are very opened ended so its possible to do are own style for each project.

For my next two periods I have Geometry honors and P.E. with Huffman and Stevens. With Geometry I feel that I do very well in his class, at the moment I have a B+, but I should have an A. The reason why I should have an A is that we receive a group grade for those at our table, and I got to sit next to the kid who’s always failing his tests. Well, I do hope I can pick up my grade for Geometry. The next I have is P.E. as I previously stated, and surprisingly, I’m probably one of the best students in the class. With P.E. we do three different things a week, on Monday we do a very intense, but short workout. Then on Wednesday we do a cardio class, such as circuits or spinning. Then Friday we lift weights and run a couple miles. Overall, P.E. is not my favorite class, or even close to being one of them, but I guess it’s something everyone has to get through if they don’t do sports.

Finally I have my seventh period with Mr. Geib, one of the greatest teachers, and the one I’m writing this super long essay for. His class is fun and has a good atmosphere. Mainly, we read a lot, usually half the class period, and then we spend time discussing the book, or writing an essay. Usually the class is not taken too seriously with Ceejae never being able to keep quiet and shouting out random things. But all in all I enjoy almost all my classes.

Most of my friends ended up going to Ventura with just a few going to Foothill. Its ok though seeing as I have made plenty of new friends already. One of my close friends that went to Ventura High, named Michael Dodge. I’ve definitely found it to be weird going to a different school as him, since we’ve been in the same school together since kindergarten. We’ve still been hanging out a bit; it has been hard since he has to do sports throughout the entire year. Usually, we just hangout on Saturdays, get some food from the 99 cents store then play random card games.

Another friend of mine, named Kai Kirwin, has been going to Oak Grove in Oak View since 6th grade, were still able to hangout often since he lives just a street over from me. Mainly on days we hangout it just consists of riding around town on our bikes, going into different stores, and just having a general good time. Most times we hangout will also include seeing a movie, whether at his house or the $3 Theater as we’re both to poor to be able to afford going to the regular theater every week or so, plus the regular theater doesn’t have $1 hot dogs.

My other friends that go to Foothill would include Michael, Paul, Jimmy, Ben, Alex, Nathan, another Michael, Lisett, and Jake. I usually do not hangout with my Foothill friends outside of school, not that I would have the time either. We’re all pretty good friends and I had already known Ben, Nathan, and both Michaels from Cabrillo. It was only the second day of high school that I became friends with Paul and Jimmy, who are twins. After the first few weeks of school I became friends with Lisett and Jake.

My family life this semester has definitely been one of the most hectic. A lot of it has to do with my 6 year old sister, Tiffany’s, general attitude of defiance and violence. Another thing is my 17 year old sister, Saydie, just being unpleasant to be around. Another thing that is not helping is how my mother overreacts about everything my 11 year old brother, Erick, and I do.

Well, Tiffany’s attitude has been very crazy; right now she is in a hitting and defiance stage. One thing I’m glad about: she finally, after about two months, left her spitting stage, that one was really nasty. But generally she just enjoys defying what people say, just so she can get her way. Honestly, what I believe caused this though was my parents raising her completely wrong; Tiffany gets almost anything she wants, and can do anything she wants with just a very minor punishment, such as going to her room for two minutes, and this could be an exaggeration.

Another problem in my household would be Saydie; lately my parents have been unhappy with her because all she says are just rude remarks. Such as on just Friday we were eating homemade pizza and Saydie comes to dinner 5 or 10 minutes late. The first thing she does is take one bite of pizza, set it down, and complain that we don’t use real cheese. This actually surprised us considering it was real cheese from real cows. And during the rest of dinner she was just unpleasant with everything she had to say. But I will say that if she doesn’t like real cheese she’ll probably find that most of her dinners will have imitation cheese product in them.

One problem my parents have is worrying about Erick and me too much. I honestly don’t understand why they become so mad at us when were fighting, probably 95% of the time it’s not even serious we’re just playing around. I believe my parents should just chill out about it; it would relieve my mother’s stress level some. And that is one of the things that has made our home life hard is my mother’s stress level, she definitely has way too much to do around our house. Another thing causing her stress is the PTA work she has to do at Tiffany’s school. I believe that’s probably one of the biggest things because that school, Will Rogers by the way, has way too many hopes to do with students but doesn’t have the money. It has caused a lot of stress on all the PTA members because they all want the 5th graders to go to CIMI, but no joke every dollar they earn goes to CIMI and the other grades receive nearly nothing.

Well all in all, I think my first semester ended up to go quite well, even if I didn’t get all the grades that I wanted. I will say that I don’t really care if I have fire all year or not, my fire class is pretty amazing. The thing I’m not looking forward to next semester is that, according to Mrs. Anderson, biology is going to get a lot harder. Well can’t wait!