Life before college

Definition of this assignment:

Writing about yourself is probable one of the easiest things anyone could ever do. In this paper I will be writing about my family, friends, animals, and exciting activities that I have done in my past. While I am talking about these things I will be able to revise a good chunk of my work out and leaving all of the juicy information in my paper and weeding out the crud.  This will help me learn how to revise my papers as well as learn better writing skills in the process. When I am writing this paper I will try to find someone whether they are well known or not that is similar to me on the web and write a short paragraph about them to sum everything up.

Course objectives 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9

What I would like to accomplish: Throughout this assignment I would like to learn how to make my paragraphs flow better as well as having better grammar in my writing. I would also really like to find someone that has done one of the things I have and see how they are alike and not alike myself.

Life Before College!

My life before college was mostly spent hanging out with the people I love, doing the things we love.

Do you feel as if you’re stuck with your family or do you enjoy their company? I personally think my family members were all a gift. I love them all to death, but don’t get me wrong, I do have those moments I want to punch them in their face. Through it all I know that I would not want to go a single day without them by my side. I have two brothers and a sister. Sam is the oldest, he is 31; then there is my sister Lisa, she is 25; and my other brother, Kevin is 22. Of course that would makes me the youngest being 19 right now. We grew up in a small town in Western Massachusetts named Colrain. Colrain was a very rural town that made it hard for us kids to get around. We usually just rode our bikes to each other’s houses because we lived so far apart.

My eldest brother Sam is living in West Palm Beach, Florida. He and his wife Amy met in Shelburne. Soon after they began dating, Amy asked Sam to move to Florida with her because she got a once in a lifetime opportunity to manage a five star hotel called The Breakers in West Palm Beach. Amy begged Sam to start a new chapter in their lives together and go to Florida with her. Sam previously worked as a chef in the hill towns at small bars and restaurants close to home but when he and Amy moved to Florida an opportunity arose for him too. Sam is now a sous chef at Pistache French Bistro. In my opinion, he is the best cook in the world. Everything that I say, or well said that I hate, he somehow makes taste like heaven on a plate. Not too long ago Sam got voted into a throw down with three other famous chefs from all around Florida. Although he did not win, it was really good advertisement for his career as a chef. Sam plans to eventually open his own restaurant.

Sam Horrocks @ the throw down

My best friend and only sister Lisa has two kids. Their names are Oliver and Autumn; Oliver is 5 and Autumn is about 6 months old. During the summer whenever I have a day off from my job as a lifeguard, Oliver and I will hang out by the pool. I taught Oliver how to swim when he was three-years-old.  When it comes time for Autumn to swim I hope that I get to teach her too. Lisa’s boyfriend George works as a plumber. I have never seen Lisa as happy as she is with George. George is also the father to Autumn and could not be more proud. Although he is not Olivers biological father, he sure acts like it. George and Oliver are so close they could easily fool you into thinking they were made for each other. The two of them go fishing. They go to several different shows and George does everything in his power to make sure Oliver has a great childhood.  Lisa used to work at the YMCA but because of Autumn’s recent birth, she is a stay at home mom.

Kevin has a couple different jobs but his main job is landscaping. Kevin has worked as a landscaper for six years now. He previously went to the Franklin County Technical School for landscaping and you can really tell that he has a passion for it because all of his work is very well put together and very professional.  He also has a part time job as a male model in Boston. I am very excited to see where this takes him because when I was younger I modeled as well. Kevin has a girlfriend named Kelsey who seems really nice. They haven’t been together very long, so I don’t really know her too well. Kevin seems very happy with her and they seem like a very healthy couple.

My mother truly tries to be the best she can is always noticeable. She started working as a teller at the bank when she was young and over the years she has worked her way up to Deposit Operation Specialist. My mom is my hero. She is so motivated to be happy and to make everybody around her happy. Even on the saddest days my mom will still make me smile. She deserves everything she has and this is an accomplishment in itself!

My dad’s name is Norman. He works at a construction company called Warner Brothers. My dad is the reason that I got so into basketball and softball. I can still vividly remember those days when he would go outside with me for hours on end playing catch making me the best player I could be. My dad is a very smart man and has taught me a lot. He was the one who taught me how to drive and how to keep pushing myself even when I was getting down on myself. I will never be able to fully thank my parents for all they have done to make me the person I am today.

My family is an extremely important and influential part of my life. Together we are an unbreakable force and we can conquer anything that shows itself before us.

Making friends has always been an easy thing for me to do. Wherever I go, whomever I see I will almost always talk to someone and have a great time. When I was a little kid I always got dragged along to all of my siblings’ sporting events. This really encouraged me to hang out with other people. In middle school I started playing field hockey, basketball, and softball. This really helped me make and keep friends; I am still friends with most of them to this day. I played basketball until 12th grade. Softball was another sport I play pretty much my whole time in middle school and high school, but then in 11th grade I started doing track due to some of the coaching problems that we had at the school. I played field hockey until 9th grade but it hurt my back a lot because you constantly have to be bending over the stick.

In the summers while I was in high school I would go to a lot of basketball camps and games so that I could improve my skill level. Basketball was and still is my favorite sport. Although I did sprain my ankles and get a couple concussions from playing, in my mind the pain is well worth it! I first started playing basketball in 5th grade and played all the way until I graduated high school. My last two years of playing I was one of the captains that helped lead practices. Being a captain meant we had to show people what they were doing wrong and it meant that we had to help players improve their skills before and after practice as well as during. Sports will always be a big part of my life. Sports have taught me many things; how to be respectful, responsible, and how to be a leader just to name a few. I personally believe that sports should be more encouraged by school systems. Sports give kids a reason to do their best work and most of the time these sports are a gateway into a more positive and healthier lifestyle.

Throughout high school I started going on trips more and more with all of my friends. Once we were able to drive was when we really started going on more adventures. We would skip school sometimes and go to different places. We would go to the beach, the mall and well pretty much anywhere anyone could think of. Once we had our licenses we almost got addicted to the beach. The closest beach to us was Hampton Beach and this is where we went the most. My friend Blaze would never turn that trip down so I could definitely always count on her going with me. Crystal, Ashley and Roxy would come if they didn’t have anything important in school happening. They would pretty much always go because the school we went to was a joke. One day when Crystal, Blaze and I were on our way back from the beach we got pulled over and we really didn’t know why because Blaze’s car wouldn’t go much over 70 mph. It was an old Saturn that was pretty much falling apart at the time. There were two police officers that walked up to our car and started asking us questions and searching for something to be wrong. This made us terrified. Questions flowed like rivers through our minds. What did we do? How do we get out of this? When they came back they just gave Blaze a warning for an almost past inspection sticker. In the end we kind of just figured that they were looking for another car like Blaze’s and moved on with our day.

The trip that I won’t ever forget was my first drive to Florida with my boyfriend Jake. We drove down to Florida to watch my brother Sam’s dogs and house while they went on a vacation to St. Barths. Our first stop on the trip was in Chincoteague, VA; the main reason we went there was because Jake had family that originally came from there. Although we didn’t end up finding anyone that had the family name, we did get to go around a National Wildlife Refuge on Assateague Island where there were wild horses running around in the woods and on the beach. Seeing the horses on the beach seemed to bring me back in time when horses roamed the countryside like wild buffalo. This was for sure one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. Shortly after we moved on with our trip.

Chincoteague Islands

Once Sam and Amy got back from their vacation, Jake and I wanted to investigate the Sunshine State so we decided to make Palm Beach our home base and we set out on a few expeditions throughout the state. We shot across the state to Venice Beach, the alleged shark tooth capital of the world. We found a lot of shark teeth, but before we left we rinsed off in the showers and sadly forgot them on the railing. Shortly after that we went to Key West. We camped out there for a night in Bahia Honda State Park. Let me tell you it was really hot to say the least! While we were down in the Keys we also went to the southernmost point and watched the sunset in Mallory Square. Words cannot even begin to describe how beautiful it really was. To top it all off we woke up at the crack of dawn and watched the bright sun rise from the horizon the next morning. On our way back home we took a different route that brought us on one of the most deadly roads in America with 318 hairpin turns in an 11-mile stretch. It was called the Tail of the Dragon in Deals Gap, NC. If I had the choice to do this again you bet I would definitely do it in a heartbeat.

You only live once so why not make the best memories out of the time you have. When I turned 18 I went skydiving with two of my friends Erin and Kaylee. We all have September birthdays so it was pretty convenient for us all to go. I am honestly really afraid of heights but I pushed through it because I feel as if you need to face your fears in life. This is one of my favorite quotes that I try to live by everyday- “The only thing to fear is fear itself.”-Franklin D. Roosevelt. Skydiving is definitely something that I would recommend everyone to do at least once in their life.

Another activity that I really enjoy doing is hiking. Jake and I recently hiked a mountain. The mountain that we conquered is called Mt. Moosilauke. I was very impressed with myself because this was my first four-thousand-foot mountain I have ever hiked and on top of all of it we were in snowshoes! Pretty crazy if you ask me. Fun fact that would have been nice going in would have been that when there is snow on the ground they don’t plow out the 2 mile road to the base of the mountain. This made the hike 14.3-miles long; not too much fun in snow shoes. When I finished the hike it felt really good to be able to say that I had hiked  Mt. Moosilauke which stands at 4,802ft.

Top of Mt. Moosilauke

Then there were the activities that I did before I had a car. My friends and I would always bike around town looking for fun things to do. One of the main places that we would go was a place called Sunburn Beach. It was just a river that people would swim and hang out  at on sunny days. There was also a small gas station in my town called Super Gas that we would bike to to get snacks. There was probably only 4 of us in Colrain but not too far from Colrain was Shelburne, where we knew some more people. Once we all got together we would find stuff to do like going swimming, riding our bikes around or play capture the flag. Growing up we all thought that there was so much to do and see in our little town. Now that we are all growing up it is really nice to see the world and go sky diving, hike mountains we never knew existed and just hang out with the people we enjoy being around.

These are just some of my closest family members, and a few of the trips I have conquered. I know there will definitely be more adventures in the near future. I’m not sure where or with who just yet. Keep an eye out though because every day’s an adventure in disguise.