Futurama

For as long as I can remember I have been yearning for the future. I was sick of high school before I even got here. I am outrageously excited to get to college, and my life after that is even more interesting to me. I've known what I want to do with my life since I was in first grade. I want to be an actor. After that I don't know how the rest of my life will turn out, but I do know that I will spend a tremendous portion of my time reading and writing, probably in many different languages.

I think one of the most recent things to significantly impact my future literacy is that this year I began to study two more foreign languages. During elementary and middle school I studied Russian and Spanish. When I began high school I focussed solely on Spanish, but this year I decided to challenge myself. I enrolled for both Italian and Spanish, and set up tutoring in Arabic with Ms Kurzban.

As I consider the future literate Gabriel, I have set myself some daunting goals. The most challenging of which is to be able to read the Quran in Arabic. It will not be easy, since Arabic is completely different from any other language I have ever studied, but I am confident that with enough practice I can do it.
Another significant literacy goal is that I will work incredibly hard and be successful enough in acting that I will be able to spend massive amounts of time reading and writing. I want to be able to relax and enjoy a sonnet or two. Maybe I'll reread Othello, who knows? All I know is that I want to have the kind of spare time where I can explore other worlds, both by reading and writing about them.

At some point in my later life I'd like to be able to write a collection of short stories. Its a format that I've always been fascinated with, and I don't think that the genre receives enough attention. I love how fleeting the tale is, how it is only a peek into the characters' lives. I picture myself as an old prune of a man, sitting in a rocking chair on my front porch in Santa Monica, California, waving to passersby and scribbling in my illegible notebook. I am composing political cartoons and dark stories where the boy wins the girl, but tragically loses her to a mysterious, and fatal, sneezing disease. Her melodramatic death would be enough to move even Charles Manson to tears, as he poured over my masterful tales in his jail cell. The world would sob in unison as the boy clutched her slimy, mucus-covered body, cursing the fates. My name would be known across the globe and "The Tragedy of the Snotty Hotty" would be an instant bestseller.

Someday I hope to realize this dream of leisure and whimsey, but I have years of work ahead of me that must come first. I don't know if I'll ever sit on the porch, reciting the Quran and writing short stories in multiple languages, at the close of a fruitful acting career. I hope I do, and I hope that my stories aren't as god awful as my handwriting. But if they are, please lie to me. Some constructive criticism is good and I welcome it, but I'd rather write what feels true to me, than change because someone else didn't feel it, like I do.

On the Outside

At some point in life, everyone feels isolated or out of place. The loneliness that results makes a person either change him self, work to alter his environment, or leave. When I attended Poughkeepsie Day School for my freshman year of high school  I realized that I only had one option.
 

I left Poughkeepsie Day School after only one year because of a bizarre nearly alien atmosphere of wealth and entitlement that left me on the fringes. The strange part was that, while only a few people at the school were decadently rich, a large number of kids surrounding me admired their prosperity and considered him the “alpha wolf.” They attempted to mimic their behaviors purely because of their money. One of the most wealthy of the kids at my school was disappointed because his first car was an Audi A5 instead of a Mazzerati.

The shocking part was that my friends empathized. I’m sure that other people at PDS felt the same way as me but I never heard from them. We were all intimidated, awed by the immense might of money. Cash stood towering over us like a gargantuan monarch, commanding our silence and respect. It was impossible to say anything against it. I felt powerless. 
 

In retrospect there was also a certain comedy to it. The dejected new Audi pilot composed raps and was unashamed to display his lyrical prowess. He once wowed his fans with a rap, nay a poem, about his Marc Jacobs sunglasses and his Gucci shoes. I wish that I could say that one of us told him how stupid he sounded or pointed out the fact that having your parents buy you six hundred dollar shoes doesn’t make you a badass, but no one did. Perhaps we were confounded by the same mysterious hope that has appealed to GOP voters for decades. The thought that we should appease rich people because, someday in the future, we could be one of them. Whatever the reason, we were unable to properly ridicule him. We stood mutely as he laid down his beats and the only thing that kept me on the outside was that at the end of his rap they laughed and smiled, while I looked away.
 

I didn’t know that I was an outsider until far into the school year. I don’t remember a specific incident that jarred me into perceiving my exclusion, but it was unavoidable. I think it gradually crept up on me, like a birthday or prostate cancer. I fought it, but eventually I realized it was indestructible. 
 

My salvation came in the white and maroon halls of a school that makes me smell like curly fries.  When I came here I realized that I didn’t need to alter myself to fit in. Things are paradoxically simpler and more complex now as I battle AP courses and joust with oppressive assignments, but I am happy with who I am and with the people that I can truly call my friends. So, finally, after a school fascinated by external things, I am in.

The Sculptors Of My Literacy

The people who have impacted my literacy the most are definitely my parents. When I was younger, and just beginning to investigate the written worlds, it was my mother who read most of my bed time stories. I couldn't fall asleep without one. With her I explored the solar system with the little prince and I travelled with Dorothy through all of her adventures in Oz. She smiled as I met Toot and Puddle, the pig couple that I soon grew to love, and who's simplistic life view I still admire. When the days of talking animals had passed, and I had left the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve in Narnia, she gave me a complete collection of Shakespeare's works. I perused his sonnets, not understanding the great feelings of love that he wrote about, but desiring to feel them myself all the same. While my father gave me a sense for the emotion and movement in Shakespeare's plays, my mom analyzed them and showed me their inner meanings, translating the archaic english for me. Since my parents met while working at The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC I could not have asked for better tutors. My father was acting there and my mother was a dramaturge, their combined skills were imparted to me through years of grooming. They molded me into a teenager who could fully understand the complex language that Shakespeare wrote with, and who was beginning to experience the feelings that he captured. While many people my age shy away from any mention of the Bard, I embrace all his works. I love delving into the text and figuring out exactly what he is trying to convey. I adore the feeling of accomplishment that comes with understanding an ancient reference, and being able to speak the words with total comprehension. Thanks to years of reading with primarily my mother, my father could take all my reading experience and transfer it into the world of Shakespearian acting. Their efforts have forged me into someone that will always have an appreciation for literature. I am so lucky to be growing up in a family that values literacy and a love of literacy so highly. Thanks to them I'm one of those weird kids that reads Shakespeare for fun, and I love it.

Cheating in a Broken System

The question of cheating and the moral issues it raises in higher education have never been more in the spotlight than they are today. With the recent cheating scandals at Barnard College and Harvard College it is impossible to avoid this topic, particularly for high school juniors who see successful and accomplished students at ivy league schools breaking the rules. The problems that have been recently brought to light are no surprise to anyone that carefully examines our high school education system.

I have always been conflicted about cheating in school. But since the GPA system is so unforgiving to students that fall even slightly behind on a single assignment, sometimes copying someone else's work can be morally excusable. Even I have certainly felt the need, on occasion, to borrow someone else's homework when I messed up and forgot about an assignment. I know that cheating is wrong, but it seems to me that the problem is our definition of cheating. While it is one thing to copy down someone else's work blindly and do nothing yourself, it is completely different to split up a large assignment between two or more people, as long as you both understand the material. However, in the tiny and unrealistic environment that is high school, if two people work together on a homework sheet that was intended to be done alone, it is considered cheating. This lends itself to a completely naive and fantastical perception of real life. In the real world, working together on something is called collaboration, and it is a necessity for building successful relationships, professional, friendly, or romantic. Collaboration is a real life skill that the current education system tries to keep us from developing. Sure there is the occasional group project, but because kids these days don't understand how to work together or properly communicate, they always end up with a few people doing ninety percent of the work while the rest do practically nothing. A skill that is necessary for success can't be taught so briefly and infrequently. This is just another example of how the education system does not serve the youth of today.

Another problem that creates a desire to cheat is the fact that so much emphasis is put on a student's GPA and class ranking that many kids will do whatever it takes to maintain a high average. That is what happens when an education system puts more emphasis on a number than learning.  I would caution the nation's education policy makers to beware the use of a convenient system where a student is reduced to numbers and test scores. It is no wonder that kids in college and high school are cheating to get ahead, they learn how important the numbers are, so who cares whether copying is bad or not, sometimes it must be done. The school should be careful what it teaches us, because we will learn it well.

When I was a minuscule copy of myself, the exact age escapes me, I developed a malady that required
inspection by Doctor Matt Denno. My mother decided to chaperone my visit and it was her, that upon
escorting me into a vacant examination room, discovered my budding talent. As I sat perched on the
paper-covered recliner she began to read silently to herself and lost focus on me. As a precocious young
lad I did the thing that all precocious young lads do when left to their own devices: explore. I began
surveying my environment. I was far above my usual height so the added feet lent me a new
perspective, a window into the world of adults. Finally I knew what it was like to look down at
something from above. I must have felt like Christopher Columbus in this brave new world, although I
do not remember a desire to commit genocide or rape and pillage the natives. As I expanded my
awareness I located a collection of doctor's paraphernalia that seemed particularly intriguing to me. I
began toying with them and attempting to determine the purpose of each. As their abstract functions
eluded me I became increasingly ill tempered and my mother finally noticed me with my new found
playthings. Amused, she asked me to read the sign hanging over them that I had neglected. She was
certain that as I was so juvenile I would be unable to interpret the complex symbols printed upon the
page. I proved her sadly mistaken. In a quavering tenor I slowly pronounced "DO NOT TOUCH THE
DOCTOR'S INSTRUMENTS." Needless to say my mother was flabbergasted. She had never taught
me how to read or practiced reading with me in dull picture books devoid of multisyllabic words. To
both of us this was an utter revelation. Once my mother had scraped her jaw off the floor Dr. Denno
entered, and we began our visit, although our day's adventure had long since concluded. From that
point on my mother began cramming my still-soft skull with literature. Nothing too ambitious at the
start, but tales of farm animals quickly gave way to The Wizard Of Oz series. As my talents grew, so
did my desires for increasingly difficult stories. I am incredibly thankful for my anonymous illness that
propelled my to the doctor, for without it I cannot say when I would have unearthed this enduring
passion.