My Community

A community to me is a group of people with a common interest that is why I know that I am part of the year up community. Year Up offers a great group of diverse young adults who come to the program to better themselves. I speak, interact and I see my community everyday. Although, we might not have know each other before the program we have become close with one another by experiencing common difficulties such as improving our speech, transportation and trying to make deadlines. My community is year up and year up is a part of me!

What are some of the things you learned about yourself as a student or a professional in Module I? Did you surprise yourself in any way? Were you proud of yourself? Were you at all disappointed in yourself? Why? 

Some things I learned about myself as a student is that if I think I don't know much about a program I am totally wrong because I found myself understanding more material than I expected to learn. At first when I started my classes I found myself doubtful and scared of trying a program and not being successful at it or just not comprehending much of it at all. Because of my fear of failure I began to just observe and watch the steps that needed to be taken to complete and assignment. What I came to find out is that we are all in the learning process together and one question that I may have two other students in my class might have the same question as me. In module one I was able to understand and work programs such as Excel, Microsoft Word, Outlook, Power point and even Access that I never saw myself working with before in my life. I surprised myself in how fast I grasped the material and I was very proud of doing to the reading at the same time. There were some challenges such as not enough time to read all the material and not being able to concentrate due to some distractions but overall I gained a lot of knowledge and would like to better myself for module two. I was disappointed in myself when it came down to assignments because I believe that the knowledge that I had about the material I could have passed it on to my fellow colleagues by assisting them in their work.  Overall I was very satisfied with my performance in module one, I completed my work and understood the material and the only difficulty I had was with being on site on time and I believe that is an issue that can be easily resolved with time management.

Despite of my neighborhood

To what extent does a person’s neighborhood shape who she or he is?
Write a post on your blog- 300-350 words- in which you talk about your surroundings and how this environment has affected you as a person:

• Briefly describe your neighborhood.

• Which statement best fits you and why?
• I am who I am because of the neighborhood I live(d) in.
• I am who I am despite the neighborhood I live(d) in

  A persons neighborhood has a big impact in a persons actions,speech and perception in life because it is where they spend most of their time. I grew up in the missions district as a child and as I was growing up I viewed a lot of gangs promoting themselves throughout the neighborhood. It was popular to see a group of young man and women at the corner store hanging out, it was also normal for two young man to get in a fight and instead of stopping it most of the time it became a free show for many as they cheered more punches to be thrown. The hostility between blocks and the loud noise that commuters would bring down the missions district was so normal that when their was moments of silence we knew something was wrong. I am who I am despite of my neighborhood I lived in, I did not get myself involved with a gang although I know most of them from school or by association. I have always had front row seats on how ridiculous it looks to fight over two specific colors and there are far more greater things to fight over.

The Poor is the Target

Today money has become a major factor in which everybody needs in order to function in life such as transportation, food, home commodes and self-maintenance. Without money we become limited to the things we are capable of doing and accomplishing. The need to have a steady income is a must and many don't meet the necessary amount in order to survive in the day to day basis and that is when "Credit" is introduced to us. What is Credit exactly? It is another form of saying a loan or borrowing money with the promised of paying it back at a certain time frame. The people that are targeted to get credit are the low income communities that have a hard time managing or meeting their expenses. It seems like a trap but the key words are always in the small fine print that many don't seem to take the time to read. The companies that profit from credit are mostly the banks and companies that offer credit to their consumers with the interest rate that is applied to every loan that is given to the borrowers. This has become so highly out of hand that "in recent year, a range of businesses have made financing more readily available to even the riskiest of borrowers" -Business week which means that people that can't pay back the money can borrow the money. It should be more of the community to come together and communicate the risks of getting credit because the Business is only going to gain from our lack of knowledge.  Poor communities are just going to keep being targeted because we are the ones that need the money and the ones that have the hardest time paying back which in the end give Business to these credit companies. Let’s avoid something before it becomes a problem!

My Biography

Born in Guatemala 1987 and migrated to the United States in 1992 my transition was very difficult. Coming to a different environment in which the weather, people and culture was very much apart then what I was used to. My childhood years were spent in the Mission District of San Francisco which help me assimilate to people that had the same features as me and spoke the same language and my teen years were spent in the Bay View Hunters point district of San Francisco which opened my horizon to a different culture than I was accustomed to. As a child I learned about Cesar Chavez, and the movement that he represented for many Latinos because I went to schools in which the majority of students were Hispanic. Later I attended a high school in which the majority was African American students and now I was learning about Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X two great men that fought in the struggle for Civil Rights movement. Because my community was Hispanic I thought I was only supposed to learn about my history and what  my people went through but I discovered that our physical appearance may be different but our backgrounds very much similar. The struggle, the suffering and the will to keep forward had persisted not only in the Hispanic community as-well as the African American community. That is I am a firm believer of the Affirmative action because it allows everybody an equal opportunity to the success at hand. “A battle lost is a battle never fought" was a quote given to me a long time ago and it stuck with me throughout my years to go for what I want no matter what because I can be defeated. I will strive for a better life and won't let struggles cloud my path.