My Family

It seems like at some point or another everybody else has written about their family. Well, this week it’s my turn. Like most of you, I can probably go on and on about how much my family means to me and reflect upon all the fun times we’ve had. I don’t know where I would be without my family. They have always supported me in whatever I did, forgave me when I messed up, and loved me no matter what. It’s so comforting to know that I have that kind of support system always backing me up and helping me when I need it. On the weekends that I decide to go home, my mom or dad is actually always excited to drive up to Blacksburg from Roanoke to come get me because they just love my company and enjoy talking to me on the way back. Most of the time on the weekends I’m out with my friends and not at home very often, but when I am, my mom will make one of my favorite meals just for me. A lot of times, my mom will have gotten food for me for my dorm without even asking if I needed any just because she knows how much I go through. It’s even good to see my sister when I get back; we weren’t very close for most of our lives, but the last year or two we have gotten closer and I miss her a lot while I am here at college. I love my family and can’t imagine my life without them.

My dad is definitely a big hangout buddy of mine as well as a great father. We both share an interest in sports, so when we spend time together it usually has to do with that. Sometimes we go in the backyard and throw around the football or baseball while talking about college or professional sports or just anything really. If I come downstairs wanting to throw the baseball, he will go outside and throw with me even if he has had a long day at work because he likes to spend time with me. Probably the thing we do the most is play golf. Probably once every month or two we hit the links. I’ve only beaten him once or twice, but it’s still fun because I get to hang out with him which doesn’t happen very often. He is brave to still go out there and play golf with me because there have been many times in the past where I’ve almost hit him with the golf cart (when I was really little of course) or when the ball has ricocheted off a tree or the cart and he had to duck to miss it (shows how good of a golfer I am), but it’s always a good time when we play. One of my favorite memories with him is when we went to Baltimore for my 13th birthday. It was just the two of us spending a few days together which was a lot of fun. We went to my first Yankees game at Camden Yards, walked around town, went to the massive aquarium they have, and just enjoyed each other’s company. Besides having fun, he knows how to be an all around, good dad. Sometimes when we are in the car, he will randomly give me advice. At the time I’m like yeah, yeah ok, but later when I think about it, I know it’s something I should listen to because it will benefit my life and he is just saying those things to help me. Sometimes he will do something nice for me and, even though it might not be something big, it still means a lot to me. Once in awhile I will come downstairs in the morning and he will be making himself some eggs. Instead of eating them himself, he will offer them to me and make his eggs second. He is one of the most selfless people I know, and that is one of the many good traits that I could use to describe him.

My mom is probably my biggest fan. She bends over backwards to try to make me happy and to do what is best for me. If it is possible, she will try to make it happen because she likes to see me happy. That is not to say that she spoils me; she has still taught me to appreciate what I have, to work hard for the good things in life, and to be generous in sharing what I am blessed to have with others. Along with those things, she instills in me the importance of doing what is right no matter what. I have failed many times at doing this, but she always forgives me and keeps pressing me to learn from it and do better. She, like my dad, is a very selfless person. Before I could drive, she would always be happy to take me to hang out with a friend or drive me to a party and she drove my sister and me to school every day instead of making us ride the bus. She knows me very well; she often can tell when I am upset and asks what’s wrong and if she can help. My mom always tell me, especially with picking out a major and a career, that no matter what I decide to become, if I give it my all and do the very best job I can do, then she will support me 100%. That is very comforting to know that she will have my back as long as I do my best.

The third and definitely not the least important member of my household is my sister. Like I said, up until recently we haven’t been very close. We didn’t hate each other or fight constantly like some siblings, but we just weren’t tight like others are. I would say that the turning point of our relationship is when I started driving us to school every morning and back home in the afternoons. I would also sometimes drive her to her friends’ houses or wherever. During those rides we would talk more than we used to and over time we grew closer. I grew more patient with her than I was before, and it was good to have a better friendship with her. Now, I really enjoy talking to her and I love our car rides. When my parents do something that gets on my nerves or upsets me, I can tell her about it and she will always understand. I know she speaks and thinks highly of me as I do her. I look forward to seeing how much closer we become as time goes on. My family is so important to me and I am very thankful for them. They have helped shape and mold me into the person I am today, and they mean the world to me.

Heaven on Earth

There are times in each one of our lives where we come to a point where we are so stressed out and burdened by all we have to go through in life. Sometimes there a huge problem and it stresses us out to the point where we feel sick. However, that isn’t always the case. Don’t you hate it when there is nothing major going on but there are so many little things that you are stressed out about that all of them piled together drives you to the point where you want to scream and punch something? It’s times like these where we need something to help vent out all that stress and frustration and just ease our nerves. For me, that is the lake.

Smith Mountain Lake is my favorite place in the world. I go with my best friend, Jared, and his family when they go and, to me, it’s heaven on earth. Even the drive up to the lake is enjoyable. I love flying down those country roads that make you feel like you’re going faster than you really are. The anticipation of the awesome time I will have builds up inside me and I just want to get there as soon as possible. After about an hour of driving, I finally pull up to their place and they all welcome me like I’m their son. The lake is one of the places I feel like I am home away from home, so I always feel very comfortable when I am there. Not only am I best friends with Jared, but I am also good friends with his younger brother, Josh, and I even have fun hanging out and talking to their parents as well. They treat me as their son, and I see them as my second family. They always ask me what I want to do, what I want to eat, where I want to go, and let me make many of the decisions. Basically they like to put me first which makes me feel special, even though many times I don’t like to make the decisions. Whenever I come down to the lake, they always make sure I am well fed. It’s like a joke between us that they have to go to the grocery store beforehand every time I come because of how much I eat, but they cook the best food so it’s hard not to be a fatty. An hour or two after I finish one meal, they ask me if I want more food or ask what I want for the next meal.

After sleeping in a little on a Saturday morning or whenever, we often go out on the lake and do what I like to do more than anything: Jetski. There is nothing more relaxing and stress relieving to me than to be out on the lake on a Jetski. When it’s a warm, sunny day with just a few clouds in the sky, the lake is absolutely gorgeous. When I’m on a Jetski, I feel so free; I love to watch the scenery as I drive by. The mountains and the water meet each other, and I feel like I’m surrounded by a view that could only be seen on a postcard. On days that are really hot, it is so refreshing to fly across the lake on that nimble watercraft with the wind whistling past my ears and the spray (or occasional dousing) of water against my face. So, the scenic drive is nice, but what’s a Jetski drive without going hardcore and being crazy right? My favorite thing to do on a Jetski is to jump boat wakes. Windy Saturdays are the best days for jumping wakes because the water is ridiculously choppy from all the commotion on the lake and that is when it is most crowded. When I see a nice wake, I get an eager, excited feeling and I drive at full speed toward it, hitting the wake at an angle so I get the most possible air. For the two or three seconds that I am in midair, I get a huge adrenaline rush and landing a particularly big jump is extremely satisfying. Not to mention, the occasional donuts or cruising the lake while standing on the Jetski is exciting as well. I will have to say going 70 mph on a Jetski is one of the most thrilling things I have ever done. There is no seatbelt, no speed limit, no lines to stay in; all it is is me and the Jetski with the water disappearing in a heartbeat behind me. When I get back, I am completely exhausted and sore (and occasionally bleeding) but it was definitely worth it.

Besides the Jetskis, there are many other activities that we do at the lake that is so relaxing and makes me forget about everything I am dealing with. Reclining on the motorboat is a prime example as well as fishing, tubing, or laying out on the lake on an inflatable raft. A couple years ago, Jared, Josh and I floated across the cove in rafts to the other side and found a particularly big rock which we called “Plymouth Rock.” We enjoy doing the simple, dumb things like that and we have remembered it and laughed about it ever since. Near their place, there is a facility that has an indoor and outdoor pool as well as a hot tub inside and out. There is also a sauna and a weight lifting room that we take advantage of. Finally, after a long but fun day out on the lake or at the pool, we come back to their place, eat a large meal of course, and find something lazy to do. Sometimes we will drive to the theater in Westlake to see a movie or just watch a game on TV. I may be sore; I may be bleeding; I may have a massive headache; I may be straight exhausted; but all those things are good feelings because they distract me from all the school and drama and everything else that I would have had to deal with if I was in Roanoke or here at Tech. The lake is my ultimate stress reliever, and it is the place where I am most happy.

Great Classes are Hard to Come By

Ultimately, how hard I work in school determines the grades I get. Many other variables can come into play such as the difficulty and time of the class, whether I like the class or not, and the mood I am in at the time of the class; but, if I want good grades and if I want to succeed, I have to work hard no matter what the situation is. However, I think the teacher/professor has a massive influence on how well I do in school and how much I enjoy it. Nobody likes a boring teacher, nor do they like one that teaches like he is educating a group of geniuses. The difference between a good teacher and a great teacher is a great teacher knows how to make a class enjoyable and the learning environment strong. The majority of teachers know the material they teach well, but not many teachers are exceptional at making their class fun or easy to learn. Some just flat suck at teaching, and that’s more than just an excuse for why I’m not doing well in the class! When almost everybody in the class is having trouble and complains about the teacher, especially when it’s a class full of 3.5+ gpa students, it’s usually a good idea to listen to the students. All through high school and even some now in college, I have had a whole plethora of teachers: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Some classes are fun, but they do not help broaden my knowledge of what I am supposed to be learning at all. My government class last year was a perfect example. I loved that class and looked forward to it every day, but I honestly cannot tell you one thing that I learned all year. My teacher also taught college classes, so he had that stereotypical form of college teaching of just walking around and talking about his PowerPoint or outline of notes all period. He didn’t give a rip about what we did during his class either. My friends and I played games, listened to music, or had full out deep discussions about what we were going through right in the middle of class. There were always about three or four people that paid attention and took notes; so when it came time for us to turn in our questions, their notes fanned out to the rest of the class and we all passed with A’s. While it looked great on my report card, especially since it was basically like a weighted study hall, it did not help me learn government. My teacher did not create a good atmosphere for learning (though it is hard to make government interesting) nor did he make me want to pay attention or even make me pay attention for that matter. I had another teacher that was very similar; he did not care what we did at all for the most part. The only difference was he did not teach us hardly at all! Government wasn’t much of a problem, but since I want to be an engineer and that class was Engineering Drawing, it was actually important that I learn as much as I can about engineering from that class. So, the end of the year rolled around and I got another 5.0 for the class on my report card, but my knowledge of engineering didn’t reflect my grade. On the flip side, my friend, Jessica, has a teacher that gets so excited about teaching math that she can’t understand what he is talking about. She has to go home and get her dad (who is a very smart Virginia Tech grad by the way) to reteach her everything on many occasions.

Some classes just straight up suck any way you slice it. My calculus class last year was a perfect example. I have always been good at math; I got A’s all through 11th grade, so when I get a C on my report card after the first semester and a 41 on my exam, I was like alrighty then! This is a problem! Granted, part of it was my fault because half the time I was about to fall asleep, but that can be turned around to say that she was a boring teacher and did not make want to learn. She even admitted herself that she made up some of the stuff that she taught us, and a lot of what we learned she did not teach how it was written in the book, so we could not go back and reteach ourselves what we did not understand. Even though I made it out of calculus with a B, I couldn’t stand the class; and it was 47 minutes of torture every single day.

There are some classes, however, that may not have the most exciting material, but the teacher makes it an amazing class. My US History class in my junior year was my favorite class that I’ve ever had. It was so fun because my teacher made it this way. Even though all we did two or three days per week was copy down notes from the overhead and did really long worksheets that took forever to do in which my teacher called “fun sheets,” I still loved the class because my teacher was absolutely hilarious. He would give us speeches right before we took a quiz or a test saying not to cheat that always went something like this: “Do not cheat. If you cheat, I will catch you and you will be labeled a cheater. You will not be able to get a job at Dippin’ Dots. You will not be able to get married, because nobody wants to marry a cheater, and you won’t have any friends on Facebook because nobody wants to be friends with a cheater.” He had many funny expressions and sayings that he used as well. When he was going around collecting homework and somebody didn’t have it, he would say, “…mmmm….filth.” Even when he taught, he made it very entertaining and comical. When teaching us about the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac, he took a white board eraser (Monitor) and a folded piece of paper with a water bottle cap on top (Merrimac) and bashed them together saying, “Mmmmm!!!” and “OOOHHH!!!” as he taught us about the famous battle. Some teachers may have made that class excruciatingly boring and a pain to sit through, but he made it fun to learn, and I actually looked forward to going to class every day. My sister is lucky enough to have him this year, and upon learning that she is related to me, he said, “I won’t hold that against you.”

So, my whole point for writing this is to say that any class can be, if not fun, at least a good learning environment that makes you want to go to class even if the material may not be all that exciting. The teacher plays the biggest part in doing so, although the ultimate success you have in the class is how hard you work. It is important for the teacher to make students want to learn and be excited about going to class as well as carrying out their responsibilities by actually teaching the students. The best class is one that I am excited about going to, that I actually want to pay attention in, and that I leave the class having learned the information well.