Junior Year English Journal #7

My version of "Where I lived and what I lived for"

I live in a brand-new Beazer-Sanford Home's house at the Farm in Arapahoe on the intersection of Buckley and Arapahoe. I enjoy living in the house because my room shows me that I am finally back where I belong, in Colorado, I also like the fact that I have a bathroom in my room. More and more I find myself on who or what I should live for. Should I live for myself or for others? Most of the time, when I make choices, I make them to my benefit rather than the benefit of others. Of course, I have just recently learned of Regis's "Grad at Grad" profile, which supports a man for others, if this is the right way to live, then I feel that I should strive to live as a person for others in my life, this will probably improve the quality of life for all who interact with me.

Junior Year English Journal #6

"What does it mean to be a man?"

To start off with, I would like to use a cliche and say that Webster's dictionary would probably define a man as an adult human male. Of course, since the first days of the existence of the homo-sapien species, humanity has tried to delve deep into its existence to try to come up with a much deeper and more thorough meaning of what it means to be a man. This is most likely why there are so many manhood confirming rituals in this world, from a Jewish Bar Mitzvah to an American father taking his son out for a night on the town when the son turns twenty-one; however, I feel that manhood has many traits that can also be found in the female gender but are more commonly male stereotypes. Being a man means that you are strong, you take responsibility for your actions, and try to be a good role model to all while at the same time maintaining a high sense of dignity, self-esteem, and independence. A man also sticks up for himself and is not easily intimidated by anything or anyone. Examples of this stereotype I have just mentioned would include such actors as Arnold Schwarzenegger taking on an alien in Predator or Sylvester Stallone taking on the entire North Vietnamese Army in Rambo. Of course, being a young adult American male, I find myself admiring such stereotypes and I am not bothered by them in the slightest, neither am I bothered by the opposite end of the man definition spectrum, characterized by stereotypically female traits such as sensitivity, however, like most men these days, I find myself thinking that a balance of the two sides or a middle ground is essential to normal adult male life.

Junior Year English Journal #5

Writing About Nature

I really feel that nature can be expressed to human kind through a human's five senses. I can see the wind cause the vestiges of trees and scrub to shimmy. I view the flock of birds flying by, and I watch the sun cast its light off the clouds that block its rays. I can hear the gentle hum of Arapahoe traffic whizzing by however many blocks away mixing with the sound of dogs barking in that kennel to my west. I can taste the air on my tongue, it has a flavor much drier and cleaner than anything in Texas. I smell the effervescent odor of autumn surrounding me, giving me a whiff of what I have missed these past four years. Now as the sun begins to fade I feel as if I could touch the cold around me as the air where I am loses its days heat. As I gaze at the spectacle of the jungle of unfinished houses all around me I am certain there is no place I would rather be than where I am right now, on my back porch watching the first streetlights flicker on in the street adjacent to mine, a view I soon will not have from the ground floor in wake of houses behind ours that have not yet come into existence.