Advanced Essay #1 Griffin Gallagher

It was hot out and we had been on the water for hours, with no results. My little sister was getting impatient, just like any four year old would. Finally one of the lines took, and a fish was on. It was small so we let my sister reel it in. When the fish was finally landed my sister’s eyes light up with excitement. Many things make people happy. Happiness is an emotion that we experience very often, because we like the feeling so we try to make ourselves feel like that all the time. Just because something makes one person happy does not mean that the same thing will make a different person happy. For example, John Doe goes on a roller coaster, and he enjoys it, he has fun. On the same day at the same amusement park Jane Doe goes on the same roller coaster and it makes her feel fearful, or scared. There are certain things in the world that cause different people to feel Different emotions.

We walked onto the wooden pier that had been here for years. The loud sounds of metal gears grinding and clanking was only outshined by the high pitched shrieks of people on the rides that seemed terrifying. It was my first time ever going on a roller coaster, I was terrified. But all my friends were excited, they loved going on rides. They had been on every ride, and rode the scariest ones twice. I on the other hand never rode any rides. I prefered to sit back and watch the flashing lights of one of the game stands. Many years later on the same pier I was the first person in line for “the great white.” If you have never been to wildwood, the great white is a wooden roller coaster. It is large and it moves quite fast, faster than the average car drives on the streets. This ride is my favorite out of all rides down the shore. This shows another face of how we experience events. When I was younger I was scared of all the big rides, but when I got older the fears disappeared and excitement took their place. This type of event causes a rush of adrenaline which when we are younger triggers fear, but when we can control this adrenaline, it can be used as a form of happiness. This shows me that over time people change, possibly even into a whole nother person. What we like at one time in our life may become a view of disgust later on in life. But the same can also happen, something that we hate we can grow and learn to love. A few examples of this is me, when I was younger I loved pickled beets, now i can't stand the look of them. This also works in reverse, when I was younger I hated kale, now I eat kale salads at least three times a week because I love kale.

When we change, the changes are seamless. We do not realize our emotions change they just do. there is nothing we can do about it. If we try to hide our emotions, we bottle them up and this is not healthy, because we become an unstable time bomb of emotion. When that bomb goes off things tend to be quite ugly. Emotions are meant to change and mold who we are as we grow up.

My essay is about the meaning of family and how it is viewed nowadays. My goals was to show to my audience another way to interpret the word, family, through my own experiences. In many ways, I feel like I did well on pulling examples from my life and pasting it into my writing because I did have a hard time doing that from the start. Something that I would like to improve on is, my grammar. I wish I had the reminder and time to go to someone to help me specifically on my grammar.

The weather was beautiful on that day where my friends invited me out to clear my feelings. I’ve been listening to J Cole’s mixtape for a long time now. They all knew what happened, that’s why they invited me out. J Cole’s music just calms me down at times when I want to be by myself, but also don’t want to be lonely. No human beings like to be lonely in this world. It’s a scary emotion.

“Hey, what’s up Jun-Jie,” I heard. “Still living,” I replied. There they go, my cousins and my friends. They’ve been in my life for a long time now, always been there, always there when I needed them, they’re just always there. They heard about the breakup that happened between me and this girl. They just wanted to make sure I’m okay, but at times, I just want to be alone. I just want to go home and sleep because when you’re asleep, you can’t feel anything, but the sensation of feeling nothing. No harm, no sadness, no depression, no suicidal thoughts, no nothing, and you have the blanket acting like a shield to protect you. What more can you ask for?

I regret what I did that day, but I felt like it was what’s best for me. There are people I go to to vent, but I know for a fact that that time was the wrong time. After greeting them and walking them to a restaurant, I plugged in my headphones, with J Cole playing, and left the restaurant to catch the train home.

As we grow older, we learn the importance of family and how it affect us day by day. They say you are able to obtain a lot more as you grow older; you become more understanding about things and start to have your own interpretation. Family is a big word to have just one meaning, and often, that meaning are referencing to your parents and siblings. We grow hearing other opinions about things whether we agree with it or not. Let me show you another way family can be interpreted.

I know for sure that I’m not the only one in this world that don’t like being lonely, and thankfully, I have really close friends that cares for me and no matter how loud my yelling is or how annoying my rants can be, they are always there to listen to me. Because of this closeness I have with my friends, I feel like that’s probably why I’m so hesitant to meet new people. I never like meeting new people. If I have a program meeting to go to, I’m not nervous because of all the strangers that going to be there, I’m nervous about meeting them. One of my fears in this world is the fear of losing somebody. So I always thought to myself, the less friends I have, the less I will have to lose. At time, that state of mind can be really wrong. As a matter of fact, most of the time, it is really wrong, but at times, I don’t realize I’m making new friends, but I am,

A lot of my friends really like going to parties, but they all don’t like going alone. There was one time where my friend asked me to go to a birthday party with him. I told him I have no idea who any of his friends are, so I would be feeling left out. We went on for days arguing about me not going to that party.

I ended up going to that party because he fooled me into thinking that his friend is really rich, so J.Cole might be invited to that party. As dumb as I am believing that, I went to his friend’s party that night. I’m not going to lie, that party was pretty fun and loud.

When I first stepped inside, I noticed the blasting music coming out of the speakers. I usually don’t like loud music playing, but I noticed that J.Cole was playing from the computer, so I was fine with that. There was so many people at the party. Some of them actually tried to convince me to drink or smoke, but I knew better than that.

We finished the night off with a cookout in the yard. We had burgers, steak, ribs, chicken, etc. Before you know it, my friend’s mom was here to pick us up. I went home, took a shower, and went to bed. It’s been a long and unpredictable day.

As fun as that day was, there were a lot of behind the scenes. It is true that I am not a party person, but the main reason why I did not wanted to go that day was because I know I might need to meet new people. The day didn’t turn out that bad, and I made a lot of friends. That was also the day where I realize that meeting new people might be okay for me now. I’m still hesitant to meet new people, but I don’t feel strongly about it anymore.

As much as I talked about how important family is, I also mentioned J. Cole a lot. J. Cole have been my role model for a really long time. At times, when I don’t have my love ones around, I listen to his music because helps me relax and clear my mind. He is an important person in my life. As much as I want to know him in real life, I still feel like he acts like my friend who is always there for me.

My goal with this paper was to juts honestly get it done and stick tone topic. I think I did well with shrinking my words and connecting everything to one theme. I would like to improve going into a depth with such limited words.

“I just feel so numb.”

I lay in my bed, body clenched from mixtures of emotions. Anger, Sadness, Frustration. Why is this happening. I was happy! I was finally happy for once. Truly happy. I swallow my anger and tried to calm down.

I text back.

Me: Ok

A bubble pops up. She begins to type.

Her: How do you feel?

I pause. How do I feel? She is someone I was always able to fully express myself with. An “idk” isn't an answer with her. I start typing. For once, I’m not going to hold back my feelings.

Me: Life is all about the seconds, not the minutes, not the hours, not the days, not the years. It's about just 1 second. One second is all it takes for your life to change. It takes 5 seconds to read a winning lottery ticket and match it to the winning numbers. It takes 3 seconds for a break up to begin. It took one second for me to snap into a reality with you. Then it took another for me to snap out of that reality into one that's realistic.

The bubble pops back up. She responds.

Her: Oh

When I’m overloaded with more than two emotions, in the end I speak everything that's on my mind. I continued to speak more fully in that conversation. I just kept texting paragraph after paragraph of just every word that entered my mind. Eventually she stopped answering and waited until I was done. For once I felt at peace with myself. She was surprised to finally know how I completely felt.

Not everyone knows how I feel all the time. Usually people get a half story of my emotions during a certain time. One of my biggest weakness that makes me cower into a corner and become completely quiet of how I feel is my father. No matter what the conversation, I’m always hesitate and stumble on every word I say. With him, I have to battle my mind who just wants to let everything out but could cost me a lot of trouble, whether its clever comebacks or outburst from anger. So 99%, I keep everything to myself in fear that one of those two scenarios happen.

“I don't know."

All the the terrible events that could take place in the future fill my mind. I can feel all the stress and anxiety, the blood boiling. Why is he asking me this? What is he trying to accomplish?

His stern voice begins to rumble in my ears with his reply.

"What do you mean you don't know?! How bout next time you ask me for something instead of thinking about I'm just gonna say 'I don't know.' How you like them apples?"

His frustration was like a slap in face when his question threw me in the corner and ambushed me.

I wanted to respond with "I like apples." It's enough that if he doesn't see it as getting smart with him, he can see it as me being "stupid and simple minded" like he always seen me as. I just stand there in silence with my confused face. I sink my head into my coat. The lights just seem too bright, they feel like a thousand infernos against my face. I think about this situation with my clouded head of his random question.

Every once in awhile, everyone has a battle with themselves. Whether it's pushing yourself to go the extra mile in a work out, that extra step to achieve a higher grade on a project, or fighting your subconscious on what to say in a current situation. These battles may be common for some people and for others it may just occur few times in their life. For me however, I usually have a battle like this everyday. There are times where I don't speak a word and just listen and other times, everything in my mind is spoken. The variable that helps me decide this, is usually based on the person, place, and subject. With certain people, when I speak out my mind of certain subject they begin to see me as a different person. Others see something wrong if I’m quiet. I have to constantly fight myself by knowing when to speak and when not to. I can win most of the fights but I’ll never win the battle against my subconscious mind.