NARRATIVE

For my paper on Experience is Evidence, I will be referring to a past experience that many of you may relate to now and may not later on. This is for anyone whose ever been told that you can't do or have something; that no mater what you did, how ever way you perservered to get where you were at, you would ultimately fail because you weren't cut out for. I've experienced this on a number of occasions, but I guess it all begins when I was in third grade and my old dusty teacher told my parents that she thought I had ADHD. She stated that I would never be able to become a successful student without medication or at least the assistance of a doctor’s advice. That old lady didn't have a clue about what she thought she knew; I never went to the doctor, my parents never even called they just enrolled me in karate- another tall task to ask of me because kids used to say I would never be any good at sports. I admit I was a little bit like Steve Urkel when I was younger, but not by choice and really wasn't interested with baseball or soccer so during game time I did what I wanted. The main reason I joined a karate school was to learn how to focus and channel all the energy I had into a task-it served me well.

Here I am years later, I've accomplished so much in academics and athletically when a lot of people say that I couldn’t. I’ve matured and progressed, I’ve put in the work, and I’ve sweat and bleed for what I needed and wanted just like anyone else who wants something does. But if so, then why does the color of my skin still pose a problem in some circumstances?

my aching in class

This is a request by one of my classmates who frequently witnesses me agonizing in pain early in the morning during English 101.  It goes like this, I run track and to be good at anything you have to go above and beyond whatever you've done in the past.  I'm trying to be real real good, so the rest of my teammates and I all train hard, extremely hard.  In fact, my frequent moaning that many of you have probably witnessed during class can be attributed to early morning workouts that began normally around 5:30 in the morning and last until about 6:30.  The workouts usually consist of running numerous hills, no less than eight of the double hill that can be found on the side of the Comcast Center, or awaking for a nice jog over to the Varsity Team House for early morning weight training (just because I'm a freshman[crap].)  But these workouts are different from anything I have ever done or even thought about doing in high school, I mean once we begin we don't stop for ANYTHING, it truly is continuous motion over the course of a 45 to 60 minute period.  Back in high school it took my teammates and I almost triple the about of time that it takes to complete something half as complex, we were clowns.  Here they don't mess around, if my coach says practice starts promptly at 5:31 am then we WILL be running at 5:31 am.  But I'm not complaining, in the past two weeks I've really come to admire and even enjoy the practices, because what starts on time usually ends on time!  And of course I've been putting my all and everything into running, that's what I do best, but it has been taking its toll on me and I thought it would only be fair to give everyone a fair heads up for what to expect the rest of the year because my moaning will be consistent with ridiculously early and rough morning workouts.  The Moaning is for the best.   

engl101 first assignment

1. My name is Chris Parker and I'm from New York, proud of it, and I went to Mepham High School on Long Island. I came to the University of Maryland to study Cognitive Neuropsychology because I am interested in becoming a psychiatrist one day.

2. In high school I did a lot of writing for most of my classes, DBQ's for social studies, research papers for science and psychology, and of course writing in English. The only real structured writing I've done at the University of Maryland so far was the essay we had gotten on the first day of English class. Outside of school I did not write very much.

3. When writing a paper I usually brain storm about it first then outline my thoughts and then streamline it to fit the theme of the paper. I find that the easiest part of writing a paper is writing the body paragraphs where all the information is, but find that the hardest part for me is jsut getting the whole thing started.

4. The type of writing that has given me the most satisfaction is free response, or broader topics of discussion to start that may widdle down something very specific.

5. The longest and most challenging paper I have ever had to write was probably at DBQ in social studies that had about 10 or 11 documents on it and I had to use all of them. I did my usual outline and streamline but I learned that it takes me a long. . .long time to write papers like that and I have to give myself plenty of time to write them.

6. If I remember learning anything about writing from other courses that I found useful it was defineitly outlining.

7. As a writer I feel as though I have a lot of ideas that could be written about but I have a severe weakness when it comes to applying them to a task or a prompt. What I am most dissatisfed with in terms of my writing is my inability to effectively refer to a specific task, or bring and essay back to what a topic means as a whole.

8. I think that the part of the writing process that I will need the most help with will be just getting started.

9. If I had a choice of topics for a research project, the issues I would liek to write about would most likely relate to race and how society has viewed it over time; something of that nature.

10. When I think of the term argument I think of verbal fighting and trying to make my voice heard over another. I think that taking a course that focuses on argumentation will help me get my voice heard more frequently and in a more intelligent manner.

maryland life

I miss New York. How come it seems like everything down here moves slower, just at like a leisurely pace; the way people drive, walk to class, and even talk. I'm not hating on Maryland people at all because I have a few people from here on my track team and i love them all but it just seems like compared to every where else New York life seems kind of rushed. I mean i thought i had patience until i met some of these people but they put me to shame. Being from such a fast-paced New York lifestyle I guess I don't take advantage of taking in what surrounds me, instead i just settle for being aware of it. i must say i admire the lax life people enjoy down here and i'm trying to adapt to it the best that i can. On a real note though if anybody drives i'm sorry this may not be you but please step on the gas when your driving, really route 1 is not so breathe taking that someone would have to drive 16 mph to take in the view. Speaking of route 1 though, I think that chipotle (especially Chipotle), Noodles and company, potbelly's, domino's and all the other restaurants around there should all start accepting terp bucks. I feel like the terp bucks don't cover anything accept hidden places in the University such as the common shop and the union shop. If anybody knows another place that accepts terp bucks let me know.