BLOG 6 - Me in 10 years and What I wish I could have done differently in High School

Well, if you really must know, in ten years i want to be teaching either global/world history or spanish in a high school classroom. This may sound really corny, but this has been something that I have really wanted to do for a really long time. I love history and I love to teach it, I am just one of those kids who wants to go out and educate the world about our own history which many have forgotten about in their lives. I also would love to teach spanish simply because I enjoy the challenge of speaking a different language and I have been learning the Spanish Language ever since the seventh grade. I really want to go to college to become a history or spanish teacher.
One thing I would most definitly do differently or never do at all in high school is, be in a serious relationship with one of your close friends. That mistake still causes me problems to this day which I try to just forget about. Many decisions in life similar to that will often come back to you and bite you in the a** at the worst times. One other thing i would also do differently in High School is do everything better than I did it before (gradewise), especially this year. I wish that I could have studied more this year and that might have brought a better turn out to my junior year, because last minute cramming sucks big time. But I do believe everything happens for the best so life must go on regardless if I like it or not.

My Life Story

My name is Dominick Michael Spylios, I am sixteen years old and I will be seventeen next Wednesday. I was born in San Diego, California on June 23rd, 1993 at six thirty p.m. Pacific Time in the Mary Birch Medical Center of Sharp Hospital. I am a young man of European, Middle Eastern, Latino, and African American descent. I live with my father who is polish, Greek, Italian, and Syrian and I was raised by him, his mother, his sister, and his grandmother who make up the wonderful life of Dominick Spylios. As you may realize, I did not mention my relationship with my mother and her family. I was brought into a life where my parents were not together and I was carted back and forth between my mother and father. My mother is of African American and Puerto Rican descent and today lives in Northern California, along with my six half siblings, that's right six. I am my mothers fifth child. I have one older half-sister named Angel, three older half-brothers named Prentis, Christopher, and Cassinova, and I also have two younger half sisters named Anna and Destiny. When I was an infant, my mother was unable to take care of me and her four other children all at once.So out of instinct, my father took me away from my mother and received full custody of me when I was thirteen months old. I moved with in with my grandmother in New Paltz and I have lived here ever since, however I have still not made any contact with my mother ever since that day. Growing up as an only child with a single father was very hard to deal with, until about the 1st grade I would cry because I missed my mother and I never truly understood why she was absent from my life. Growing up in New Paltz has made such a dramatic impact on my life, New Paltz is just one of those places where anything in everything is accepted by the public.
When I was a second grader at Duzine Elementary School in Mrs. Skinner's class, I began to realize that I was quite unique and no one was quite like me. I felt racially different. Almost everyone in my class was of European descent, and maybe about three students were African American, however I was in the middle of this situation, because I was a bi-racial boy that was raised by an all white family and I was the only child like me in my entire class, I felt very different. But thank god I never received racial discrimination from any of my peers in my childhood and adolescent years of life. I felt alone until about the year 2000, when my cousin Derrick was born, he was and still today is like my little brother, and he too has a white mother and African American father. A year later his brother Donovan was born. To this day, the three of us are more like brothers than cousins regardless of our seven and eight year age difference. One of the things I love the most about my family, is that the color of our skin is invisible, and that the color of our love is what really matters on the inside. In my family, there are always conflicts but those conflicts will never separate us, because my family will always be there for me when anything happens, and visa versa.
As you can see, this essay is coming straight from the bottom of my heart and I'm just pouring it into this paper as I go. In life, it is believed that one is what he/she sees, feels, and hears, and I find this to be very true to me. As a maturing young man, I used to obtain a harsh feeling of anger towards my mother, and I never really understood why she left my life, this came to me as a very frustrating issue to deal with. To this day, my father has disconnected contact from my mother and I, however it took me sixteen years to really find out that is was for the better of me. I sadly found this out the hard way. As the curious young adult that I am, I had sometimes tried to rediscover my past and really see why I am who I am today. A few years ago I stumbled upon birthday cards and custody files from my mom, and to find out that she was an unfit mother who neglected to keep in consistent contact with me,she would attempt once, then forget about me for about a year then attempt it again, and it killed me on the inside. I found this out from my close family members. It took me sixteen years of being stubborn thinking I was always right, to realize that my dad was doing this to protect me from emotional harm and I am forever grateful for that. In the near future I do plan on making the trip to California to see my other family, but I am still wondering what my reactions are going to be. That also contributes to who I am, and I am still out to conquer my goals in life.
I believe that I am what I see, hear, and feel, because these factors have all shaped the mold of the life of Dominick Michael Spylios. I see respect from others, and everyday drama in my life, this has helped me become a young man who is responsible, honest, amiable, and respectful. There have been times in my life when I have have been called hurtful things by people who do not know the real me, and then there are people to know me for who I am and can always think of the sentence “Dominick Spylios is such a nice boy.” This has shaped my life because I am one who is very well liked by many, and I am able to discard people's hateful comments from my emotions and actions, I am also one who is always remembered for being that nice young man. Throughout my short and nowhere near complete life, I have felt many things, and the most powerful thing I have ever felt in my life is love. People show me love and really are able to reach down inside me and see the true Dominick Michael Spylios. I was raised by love, my family and my life is made of love and nothing else. Love has gotten me to where I am, and love will take me anywhere I dream of. The powerful of feeling love has shaped my life because I am surrounded by it and I am always one to give it, making me one of the nicest people anyone could ever know. That is the story of Dominick Michael Spylios and that is why I am who I am, and I think that I will be an outstanding asset to your college.

Men Come and Go in a Sea of Death...Then on to the Plantation

Ahh where to start.. well this last week I have read books two and three of the four in the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, which are titled Reconstruction and The Plantation. In the second book. Jane's basically adoptive son, really the son of Big Laura, Ned is all grown up now, at around the age of seventeen, he is ready to leave home. Jane is very uneasy about his decision because there is basically an exodus of african Americans leaving the South and the Ku Klux Klan is everywhere an African American does not want to be. Now that Mr. Bone the plantation owner tells his slaves that he does not own the plantation or the slaves anymore, and that the Yankee Soldiers have left, the Blacks were trying to start their own lives alone. Ned like many young black men was highly influenced by the speakings and teachings of Frederick Douglass. However Frederick advised that African Americans stayed in the South, because now without former Yankee controll, Louisiana was basically as hectic and as racially dangerous as it was before the Civil War. Ned disregards this advise and wants to help other blacks and he has changed his name to Edward Stephen Douglass from Ned Brown and Ned Douglass. He becomes active in a committee that helps blacks flee the plantations. One day, Colonel Dye tells Jane that Ned needs to stop what he is doing, but when Jane tells Ned, Ned refuses. Some time later a group of Ku Klux Klan members, wearing hoods, appear at Jane's cabin. They strike her several times, but Ned is not there. When he returns later that night and sees her face, he tells her that they are leaving. Jane does not want to leave because she does not feel it is her time. Ned, who treats Jane as his surrogate mother and calls her mama, is very upset and wants her to come. She insists on staying though, and they both weep when he leaves later than night. Ned then leaves for Kansas to live a free life and help change the life of African Americans in the South. Jane later meets a widower named Joe Pittman and they soon fall in love and get married. Even though Jane is barren it is not an issue in their marriage because Joe has two daughters from his previous marriage. As a living, Joe breaks horses and Jane starts seeing visions with a black stallion as an omen and she gets very frightened. She then goes to see a Creole voodoo woman and she is told that this horse will kill Joe and she tries to do everything to save him from this horse, however Joe goes by a man's way and he is killed by the black "devil" horse Jane also receives letters from Ned and she is informed that after he finishes school he will be joining the army to fight in Cuba. When Ned comes home, he brings back a wife and children and he is a preacher bringing the words of Frederick Douglass to the Blacks of the bayou. Sadly for Jane, death strikes again and her neighbor a Cajun man Albert Cluveau shot and killed Ned at one of his preachings. SAD TIMES. He then became crazy because of the guilt and his daughters thought Miss Jane put a hex on him. Jane explained it was the power of God.
Damn I hope you love this blog because my hands are starting to hurt. In book three Jane moves to her final "stomping grounds' in her life...The Plantation. Here she works outside in the field picking cotton and it was quite a competition....One woman was mentally challenged and she was by far the fastest picker and new women would always try and compete with her and they would never win... and all she would do is laugh all day, oh god I wish I could do that at times too... The plantation owner also had secret sexual relations with a worker leaving him with two young sons, one white, and one mulatto. However Timmy would never be treated nearly as well as Tee Bob. Miss Jane worked on the Plantation until she started to age and was unable to do outdoor work, so she was switched to a house mother because the plantation owner's wife Miss Lillie liked her so much. These books were very intense and I liked the second book significantly more than the third book. I feel very bad for Jane because jeeze, losing a husband and a son, it must be hard. I could never imagine living a life like Jane, she never got anything easy in life. But atleast her life is starting to settle down a little bit since she has started working on the plantation.

Poor Ticey Taking Life By The Horns

I am reading the novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines, which tells the story of Miss jane, a fictional charatcer who lives in 1962 as a 100-something year old woman in Louisiana who tells her story about the civil war through modern history to a white reporter. I am almost done with the first book of four. Instead of chapters, there are books representing different time periods of Miss Jane's life. The first book is titled The War Years Miss Jane grew up on a plantation and Big Laura was a very large and strong slave woman who took care of Ticey as ifshe was her own. Yankee troops came to the plantation when the civil war was nearing its end , and soldier Corporal Brown told her that Ticey was a slave name and that she was a free girl now. So he named her Jane Brown, afer himself, however this didn't go over well with her slave owner and she was beaten because she reffered to herself as jane and no longer Ticey. When a large gropu of slaves including jane left for the North, they were ambushed by the Secesh Army and they were all brutally massacred, only Jane and Big Laura's toddler Ned survived by hiding in a bush. They then lived together as basically mother and son. My reaction to my reading so far is that I feel major sympathy for Jane. She was only nine years old taking care of a 3 year old. They can barely eat and drink, trying to travel to Ohio, meanwhile they are nowhere near leaving Louisiana. I find it very apalling that Janie's slave master beat her until she stopped calling herself Janie, that is very disturbing. Oh and by the way she was bathed until she started to bleed because she never reffered to herself as Ticey ever again. I am glad that she kept her name as Jane and I hope she experiences some better times in her life, before racism makes her life tumble to the ground again. Ta Ta for Now!

Technology and My Literacy

Ever since the first grade I have had a computer in my life. Until middle school I didn't have access to the internet at home, so there was really no affect on by reading through the computer, I would read every night for an hour before I went to bed until around the time I started middle school, also when I got access to the internet at home. After being able to surf the web whenever I wanted to. Now I can read books online aswell. Nut technology like computers have really taken time away from me. Reading had moved from a hobby to a homework assignment and I had only been doing it when I had to, and sadly I have the same habbits today. Televisions and iPods also contribute to the time not used reading. My life revolves around music so my iPod can be my best friend at times. I believe that if the computer, the television, and the iPod were not created, I would definitly have more time to myself reading.

GET LITERATE......OR ELSE, LOOK DOWN...IT'S YOU!

Growing up as a child I had read many books and enjoyed tons of them like: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Magic Tree House Series, The Littles, Animal Ark, Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Odyssey, The Face On The Milk Carton, and Go Ask Alice. I would have to say that my favorite book that I remember the most about and that majorly changed my way of thinking about day to day life was definitly Go Ask Alice by Anonymous. This book was so intense, it tells the story of this teenage girl who moves to a new town and makes the change from innocent school girl, to alcoholic and drug addicted girl who sleeps around at parties gets high and runs away from home twice. The entire story is told through 1st person narration through Alice's diary. I read this book back in the 8th grade and I am strongly considering reading it again because I am simply in love with this book because it is phenomenal. After reading this book I realized how drugs can really mess up your life, from making you "put the crazy pants on" to seeing cockroaches, maggots, and worms all over your body during an overdose, and eventually killing you. This book caused the red light to flash in my brain and is always there to remind me of what to do and what not to do. That is why I strongly think of Go Ask Alice as an inspirational, motivational, and life changinging book. It is the best book I have ever read in my life......so far