Prologue

There are a bunch of things that I want to do after high school. I plan on attending Palomar College for 2 years. After which I will transfer to a university. However, I don’t want to get too ahead of myself. I need to think small. Right now, my primary focus is to get a job. Secondly, I plan on getting a car. To make all of this possible, I plan on living at home until I can support myself financially. I’ll get into more detail as I move on. I know life will be hard. It isn’t intended to be easy. There will be obstacles in my way. However, what really matters is how I deal with those obstacles and keep moving forward, never stopping. I plan on living life to the fullest, unlocking my full potential, and conquering my future.

Social wellness

Currently, I haven’t addressed my social well being that much because, well, I don’t know how. However, now that I’m getting ready to transition into the real world, addressing my social wellness will be extremely crucial. Especially since I’ll be going to college and working.  How I plan on doing that ? That is the real question here. I plan on meditating  and building many relationships and friendships. To do all that, is hard as it is. I should’ve been doing all of this during high school, but my shyness got the best of me. However, there’s always another chance  to start all over, start fresh, and that’s the thing that I’m pleased about. It gives me another shot at doing all the things I couldn’t do while in high school. Construct my social circle, get a girlfriend, but overall, be happy with myself.  I won’t be able to do any of those things if I don’t work on my emotional well being first and foremost. It would be impossible. The reason being is because I’m a shy person and I assume too much. I don’t know. I just feel like some people don’t mean what they say, and I don’t like that. I prefer people that are honest and say the truth, not fake people. Like Drake, in his song, “Fake Love” he says “ I got fake people showing fake love to me, straight up to my face”. That’s how I feel most of the time. I’m gonna make a change emotionally. Just wait and see. I’ve noticed that I’m actually not that persistent enough, even though I’m a former athlete. Being persistent is a trait that everyone should have because the world requires that. Being a job, school etc. Everything requires being persistent. You want to go to a prestigious school? Be persistent. Do you want that promotion at your job? Be persistent. This is the trait that would be number one in my mind if I had it, and I will have it. You aren’t born persistent, you become persistent. I plan on being socially persistent. Now that’s easier said than done.

Physical wellness

Now this is a wellness that I have been addressing continuously for over 4 years now. Being an athlete has helped me tremendously over the past years. Not only physically, but also mentally. One thing that wrestling has taught me, is to be persistent. Don’t ever settle for less. Always go for more, and one you have more, keep on going. Never settle down. Now you’d think that those things would only apply to wrestling itself. Well you’re wrong. Those things actually carry over with you in school, and hopefully, throughout life. I’m proud of myself for how far I have come in regards to being a student and an athlete. Never in my life have I ever thought to be an athlete or even get my stuff together in school. I hadn’t always liked school. I think every person would say the same. However, as I started to pay attention to what my teachers and coaches would say, that’s when I decided to change my views on my education, and my physical well being. One major accomplishment that I’ve made was run an 8 min mile. Sure it might not mean anything to other people, but for a person like me, that’s a significant milestone. That meant that I am physically improving. In the future, I plan on getting a gym membership and start eating healthy. For now, what I plan to do is start my workout plan to increase my strength and actually stick with it throughout my life, hopefully. However, I don’t plan on fully working on myself for my whole life. What I had in the back of my mind was to, at one point, come back to help coach the wrestling team, to give back. I’ve always had that idea. I want to be a role model to the young ones. It’s possible too. During my times as a wrestler, I’ve seen former wrestlers come back to help us out. I always wanted to pass my wisdom down, so it wouldn’t die out. I know it may seem crazy, but it’s just an idea, that will become a reality. What I plan to do is to keep working out to be in shape so I can keep up with the younger wrestlers. To me, that sounds like a plan.

Intellectual wellness

This wellness right here has stressed me for the past year now. How exactly ? Trying to keep up with projects and homework, having missing assignments, and bad grades. That’s pretty much it. This wellness is one of my top three wellness’s, the others being Social and Physical. I’m saying this because I don’t want to become naive.Out in the real world, being naive would be a nightmare for me. You have to be smart. You want to be well informed about the world, nationally, internationally, and locally. This wellness also ties with another wellness: Social wellness. How ? Being well informed about certain matters, locally and nationally, would make a really good conversation starter. People will look at you and be like “ this guy is alright”. Now back to me. How I plan to address this wellness is going to college obviously. That’s basic. Going to college will build the foundation of your intellectual well being. However, teaching yourself about other things other than English, Math, and whatever you plan on majoring in.  You’re only scratching the surface. What I plan on doing is reading or watching the news everyday to stay up to date on certain matters. Other things I plan on doing are reading books to expand my vocabulary. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past few months now. I want to expand my vocabulary. I want people to be able to understand what I say. I don’t want them to think less of me. If you want more information in regards of me saying that, please see “Social Wellness”. Building my intellectual wellness is so important to me because since it’s my last year of high school, why not put it out all on the line. Wait, let me rephrase that. I’m going to extend that wellness into my life out in the real world. Sounds about right.

Spiritual wellness

One wellness that I haven’t addressed enough. This wellness, if addressed enough, could be the matter between being sane and going insane. One of the ways that I HAVE been addressing this was that my teacher had the whole class meditate for 1 to 2 minutes every other day. It’s designed to help us focus throughout the day, even if it was just for a short period of time. Lately, I’ve been feeling down for some reason. I don’t know what it is, but I just feel that way. I’ve been thinking a lot. Some of the reasons may be that it’s my last year of high school, and my grades haven’t been good. Well they have been. However, they could be better. I plan on getting straight A’s. Sometimes I just feel like giving up. It’s kind of difficult. It shouldn’t be. All you have to do is adhere to the deadlines. I have trouble doing that. I have a bad habit of procrastinating. I need to fix it. More importantly, I need to raise my spiritual well being because if you’re feeling down and melancholy all the time, how will you get any work done ? Most of the time, I’ve said to myself “ What am I even doing here ? I feel like I don’t belong. I feel like I’m annoying in the presence of others”. This is where spiritual wellness comes into play. To me, being spiritually well means knowing yourself, inside and outside. From what I’ve learned, knowing yourself allows you to do what you want. People will see your “true self” instead of something that’s not you. This in turn will make your presence comfortable around them thus allowing you to make more friends, which is what I want to do. To me, I feel like this is going to be an interesting trip.

Emotional wellness

So many wellness I can choose from. This wellness is just as important as all the other ones. You can be strong all you want, but if you’re not emotionally well, you’ll just be a zombie roaming aimlessly throughout the world. That’s what I don’t want happening to me. I want to be humble, caring and loving for the people around me and the people I’ll encounter in the future. I want to be loved by other people and have them say “ Hey, I’d like to talk to that guy again”. However, to make that happen, I first have to give love. I am so full of love right now. I’m being serious. The only problem is, I don’t know how to express myself. As always, I fear judgment. I don’t know why. Right now, I’m up to the point where it’s extremely frustrating when this happens. I’m trying to change that. I’ve had first hand experience with that. I’ve assumed too much. In the end, it didn’t work out, and that made me reflect on myself, “I can change that, I don’t want that to ever happen again”. I’ve felt down as a result of that, but how I dealt with it after ? I didn’t let it get the best of me. I stopped talking to that person because we both wasted our time. Especially after we started talking again. In the end once more, it didn’t work out. At that point, I didn’t care about that person anymore. I was like “whatever” and moved on. Throughout my past experiences, I’ve come to realize that you will encounter certain matters throughout life. However, what really matters is how you deal with those matters and keep moving forward. I learned that I shouldn’t let it get to my head, and I won’t.

Financial wellness

Firstly, one of my main goals right now aside from graduating high school is to get a job and eventually a car. I’ve been trying to get a job now for the past month or so. I haven’t been so lucky. However, I’ve gained experience. For once, I’ve learned to make a resume. I have my English teacher to thank for that. Secondly, going to interviews has made me confident and persistent. Before, it was nerve wracking for me because I was overthinking it, things like “ Am I going to do good ?” or “ Am I good enough for this job ?” From those experiences, I’ve learned to just be confident, professional, and clean and slick. In addition, I also learned to stop thinking about the interview too much. If I didn’t get the job, oh well. Things happen. Eventually, I feel like I’ll get a job. Sooner or later. For now, I’m trying to save up money for a car. Talking about money, I also came up with a detailed budget of my income and expenses. Firstly, I’m going to get a part time, minimum wage job. Here are the results. After I reach my goal, I plan on pursuing my career in music production. The chart on the bottom represents me during my schooling. I plan to continue living with my parents until I’m financially stable.

During Schooling

This chart is based off of me working at Blaze pizza, where the hourly wage is $9.04. Every two weeks, it adds up to $632.80

Reached my goal

The chart above represents me living in Los Angeles after I reach my goal, which is to become a music producer. However, one problem I’ve encounter while researching my profession was that the hourly wage and annual salary varies. The reason being that first time music producers earn minimum wage for working. As the years go by, gaining experience, the salary will eventually increase and I’ll be able to make an acceptable living in the Los Angeles area. For now, I’m still going to live with my parents and start producing beats and garner attention around me to gain experience. From there, I’ll move up to Los Angeles and find a job there, hopefully. This is going to be interesting. You’ll see

Occupational wellness

This wellness defines my status as either being successful or unsuccessful. At the moment, I’m pretty set up on being a music producer. However, Palomar college doesn’t offer a music production course. I’m kind of stressed out right now because the college that does offer it is MiraCosta. The problem is, I already signed up for Palomar and already did the Palomar promise. So I feel like I can’t change that. They also don’t offer a culinary course. So, I’m kind of hopeless at the moment. My other plan was to take either Kinesiology or become an EMT. I feel like I should become an EMT because I want to help those in need and be a positive influence. I feel like it would be an interesting career. Think about it. You’re helping other people. I can make a difference. Mainly because I want to meet new people. It would be a humbling experience because you’ll be putting someone else’s life ahead of yours. However, while I was doing my research, which included asking my friend, who is an EMT, questions on how it is being one, he . The one thing that caught my attention that he said was that his instructor had 13 friends commit suicide because they all had PTSD. In addition, he also said that you have to be mentally strong to be able to work as one. The reason being is that you’ll be exposed to many gruesome scenes: blood, limbs, exposed organs, diseases, and etc. I’m kind of in a rut at the moment because as I said before, Palomar doesn’t offer a music production course, but Miracosta does. Nevertheless I’ve talked with certain teachers about this matter just to see what I can be able to do. While I was gathering information, I’ve devised a plan. So far, my plan is to go one year at Palomar because the first years are general ed anyways. From there, I’ll transfer over to Miracosta and take music production classes. Sounds good to me, but being an EMT does sound interesting.

Environmental wellness

In my opinion, I feel like people take the world for granted. That they don’t realize how much the world really matters until it is destroyed. That’s why you see a lot of trash everywhere, plastic, aluminum cans, etc. In the ocean, at school, the streets, the list goes on. This is heart wrenching, a plague to society. However, there have been countless ads and organizations that try and promote cleanliness and alternatives to no avail. People still go and do the same thing, trashing up the world. When will this stop ? The answer is a no brainer. How hard is it to really go up to a trash can and throw your trash away ? Are we that lazy ? Come on guys. We’re better than this. Anyways, enough trash talking. There are numerous ways we can help the environment, small or big, it doesn’t matter. Things that I have been doing are throwing my trash away instead of throwing it off to the side. Just small, simple things. Nothing special. Yet. Another thing is that I don’t kill insects. Even though we may see them as a nuisance, they are actually living things and beneficial to the survival of earth. I myself don’t kill any insects. I tend to avoid that. If they don’t harm you, leave it. It’s as simple as that. Plus they’re a part of mother nature, and mother nature is beautiful. If you don’t take care of mother nature, it will take care of you. One way or another. I want to be able to grow up in a world where it is simple yet elegant. Who doesn’t ? That starts with us, primarily. One way I could improve is by recycling more and throwing my trash away. That’s just the beginning. I want to be more involved in my community. Why ? I want it to thrive, prosper, beauty in the midst of chaos, and I would get to meet new people that share the same passion as me. The thing is, am I going to follow up on this ? I will.

The end ?

It’s never over. There are so many new things to learn out in the world, waiting to be discovered. You just have to go out of your own way to go and explore it. Live life. There are so many things that I want to do after high school. I’m actually pretty stoked about the possibilities. It’s pretty depressing that my high school journey is coming to an end and I regret not making the best of it. However, as one journey ends, another one begins. I want to thank everyone, friends, potential friends, and my teachers for these 2 unforgettable years. It has truly been both a pleasure and a blessing to have you guys not just as friends, but family. Thank you.

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Prologue

Body piercing is an art. A form of self expression. Individuality. Body piercing is a form of a body modification in which the skin is pierced to create an opening where jewelry is then inserted in the opening. Most people will pierce their bodies because of cultural or aesthetic reasons. Regardless, most people won’t know about the consequences that are commonly associated with body piercings. I myself don’t have any body piercings, however, this Health Fair Project is intended to educate and inform young adolescents about the history and health effects associated with body piercing should they ever get one themselves. Especially my chosen audience: incoming high school freshman. The reason being because young freshman, being ignorant, would want to get a piercing simply because it looks cool and because everyone else has them.

 Research

In the process of researching, I gathered several articles and multimedia sources to aid me in writing my research paper. It all started with the simple, yet essential question, “How is the body affected by body piercings”. From there, I created sub questions with the intent of driving my research forward. I put them all on a graphic organizer. It was difficult at first, considering that the school blocked almost everything, from videos to pictures. Regardless, I was still able to gather information. In my research paper and brochure with the same name, I explain in full detail about the social impacts, the history, and the kinds of infections and scars that are commonly associated with body piercings.

Changes ?

I wouldn’t make any changes for my audience. This project, as it was stated above, is intended to educate and inform young adolescents about the effects and consequences of body piercing. Overall, body piercing is a form of self expression and the choice to pierce their bodies is up to them. However, if they read this post, they will now have knowledge over body piercing and hopefully will make better choices or take precautions when getting a piercing.

Reflection

My journey through doing this project had its ups and downs. Partly due to the fact that I wasn’t pulling my weight and unleashing my full potential. However, there was some good things that were done. In the process, my team and I were able to come up and narrow down 20 community problems. Personally, I thought this was the most difficult part of the whole project because I didn’t know how we were gonna come up with potential problems that affected our community, much less 20 problems. However, it eventually subsided and we were able to come up with a few problems that we thought affected the community.

Brainstorm

As it was stated above, we were asked to come up with 20 community problems , then narrow them down to one that, in our opinion, was of high importance.  We came up with a company that specializes in restoring landscapes, filling them with life such as grass, plants etc. It’s called R.S.A Environmental.

Business Plan

In our business plan, we collaborated to expand on the idea of a company that restores landscapes. In it, the business plan included the type of services our company offers, financial status and the structure of the company. In addition, a company would not be complete without a logo that captures the attention of everyone. We created such a logo using a website called Desmos that our math teachers taught us how to use.

Advertisement

In this step, we were tasked with either creating a video that went over the community problem that we have selected or creating a yelp page with reviews. My group and I went for the video. For the video, we used a program called Animoto. The video requirements that it had to have the business name, obviously, an address, hours, a visual appeal like a picture, and any additional information.

Elevator Pitch

Finally, we had to come up with a way to seal the deal and shake hands with potential investors who are willing to invest in our company. Our teachers finally tasked us to come up with making an elevator pitch. For the pitch, we had  only 3 minutes to convince potential investors why they should invest in our company and, in addition, we had to also give a short explanation of what we do and why we are better than others.