Author: aconway17

#6

aconway17

I have always been a fan of taking pictures. It captures a moment that I probably won’t be able to remember because I have the memory of a goldfish. But pictures are important to me in a couple of different ways.

My dad is notorious for getting lost when we go on vacation as a family because he is always caught up taking pictures of everything. My family and I recently went to Spain. My dad was taking pictures of something and I asked him to take a picture of something and then another thing and then yet another thing. After a little bit of me doing that he pulled out a small digital camera and said “you can take picture too you know”. So I started taking pictures and instead of my dad getting lost from taking too many pictures to count, it was my dad and I getting lost. We got to bond through something we both found really fun and it was probably the best vacation I had.

I also did photography in high school. It was probably the only part of high school I actually liked. I had so much fun in these classes because I got to take pictures of nature, my friends, weird projects, etc. By far my favorite things to take pictures of was nature. But one year I was in AP photography and my teacher wanted to challenge me, so he said I couldn’t just take pictures of nature, I had to tie something more into it. This challenged me because I’m not the biggest fan of taking pictures of people because it’s hard to tell someone to do something that you’ve imagined in your head. So, I decided to start taking self-portraits within nature. At first I was nervous to take pictures of myself because I wasn’t that confident and didn’t want anyone to make fun of me. But as I started to take more self-portraits and I started winning prizes for my pictures, I started to gain more confidence. I learned a lot about myself through photography and honestly the only reason I can remember this is because it is captured in a photo.

#5

aconway17

What would I tell my 10 year old self today?

When I was 10, I was told a lot of different things from a lot of different people. One of the things that always comes straight to my mind is what one of my elementary school teachers told my mom. She called my mom on a Friday afternoon to inform her that she believes that I am slow. She wanted to put me on a ‘special’ program to help me do better in class. Some would think that this is completely understandable, but it wasn’t. She left my mom a voicemail with this information then refused to answer my mom’s hundreds of calls in return. It wasn’t until the next week that she explained that I don’t pay attention in class, I don’t answer the questions she asks me, and she doesn’t think I can hear her. So, I got a hearing test, turned out I had perfect hearing. The real reason why I didn’t want to answer her was because I was shy. That’s it. But, she still put me on this ‘special’ program. For instance, if I went off to ‘la-la land’ in class (got distracted) then I had to make a tally mark, if I was good that day then I got a sticker, and a lot more things along these lines. This teacher made me believe that I was stupid. I literally still have nightmares about to this day. She humiliated me as a child and I carry it with me everyday.

This haunts me and I don’t know how I made it out of that class. But I want to give my 10 year old self some advice. You are smart. Who cares if you are quiet or too scared to speak in front of a class. You know you are smart and even though you were treated like you are stupid, you are smart. Don’t let people bring you down because they are not your biggest enemy, you are. If you start to believe that they are telling the truth, you will start telling yourself this. But don’t. You will do great things. I believe in you.

#4

aconway17

Sometimes life is the worst. I really wish everything would just go how I planned it. Like remembering to write these posts. I thought this would be a great way to help me express my thoughts, even if it is to people that I can’t see. But this is turning out to be harder than expected. Stress has been a daunting thing in my life. I have been struggling with understanding how to control it, but somehow cannot succeed. I have taken on a little bit more than I can chew this semester. I have decided to take on eighteen credit hours when I have never done this, got involved with two new clubs, and started an officer position in my sorority. I thought this would be a great way to immerse myself within the University of Dayton community and become more connected with people. I planned it out to be this glamorous experience that I would be so proud of myself for doing. But so far it is turning out to be the opposite. I am having a hard time trying to decide where and how to spend my time. I think of myself and holding school to a higher standard considering the fact that I want to become a teacher, but this priority has seemed to lesson this semester. I am disappointed that I have allowed this to happen and it needs to change. I have been giving more time to my sorority, the clubs I’m a part of, and overall allowing myself to stress out. This isn’t how I want my college experience to go. I wish it would go how I planned it all out in my head. To get a 4.0 GPA, succeed in my position in my sorority, volunteer around the city, have fun with friends, and so much more. But realistically this cannot happen. Life doesn’t work how you plan it and it is hard to accept this reality. I like to think that everything happens for a reason, but for some reason I am having a hard time believing that not doing well in school, being stressed out by something I used to enjoy, not getting along with roommates, and a lot more is for a reason. I just have to trust that everything will work out in the end, but we’ll see.

#3

aconway17

Happiness. I feel like it’s hard to come by sometimes. These past few days I have been recruiting girls for my sorority. We had to ask more personal questions the other day like who inspires you, what are you passionate about, and more. My favorite question that I asked is what is your happiest memory. Some girls had a hard time answering this and others had the moment at the top of their mind. For those who had a hard time answering right away, I would tell them mine. My dad and I went on Easter vacation together one year to visit my grandma. She lives in Florida, so I was super excited to be in the warmer weather compared to Chicago. We got to her condo late and it was pitch black out. My dad and I decided to walk down to the beach because it was so nice out. When we got down there, we couldn’t even see the ocean since it was so dark. The only thing that we could see were the stars. We can’t always see the stars back home since we live closer to the city so, it was beautiful. My dad got out his phone and turned on his astronomy app and we looked up every star, planet, and moving stars (turned out just to be airplanes) we saw. We were out there for probably an hour just looking at how beautiful the stars were. And right before we were about to go back up to the condo, we saw a shooting star. I will never really understand why that is my happiest moment, but I felt complete. To me, happiness is rare, so I greatly treasure moments like these where I can truly tell they are happy.

#2

aconway17

I am a pessimist at heart. I’ve never had a problem with it before, but when it truly started affecting my mental health I decided I need to try and stop. Being a pessimist, to me, means that I am viewing the world realistically and not trying to see the good in everything because maybe there isn’t. But a couple years ago I went through the hardest time in my life (so far) because of what a few mean girls did. I fell into a depression that lasted multiple months and couldn’t get myself out of it. After a lot of therapy (and when I say a lot I mean 4 therapists over the span of five years) I was able to control the depression more and keep myself out of it, but this also led to different mental blocks. I quickly developed an anxiety disorder that feels like it has halted my life, OCD (I’ve kind of always had this since I was a kid, but it grew with the other mental stuff), and another thing that I don’t really want to put out on the internet, but lets just say I can’t control my emotions. So after discovering I had these, I went on medication to help. But I still wasn’t looking at the world positively and this continues to affect the stand still of my mental health because it isn’t improving. So, my most recent therapist recommended that I keep record of things that I am grateful for so I can try to change my outlook on life. So that’s what I’m doing. Every so often I want to try to think about things I am grateful for. Whether it be something as simple as breathing today or something weird like math compasses because they’re really fun to draw arcs with in my geometry class. I want to try to change my outlook on life to help me believe that I can do this through gratefulness.

#1

aconway17

I have never considered myself to be a writer. In high school, I knew I was good at Math and wanted to progress with that since I found it fun and easy. I was not as strong of a learner in my English classes because I have reading comprehension difficulties as well as the ability to not know how to spell anything. Because of this strain on my learning I turned to Math, so this is why I want to become a Math teacher for high school students. When looking back at my high school experience, I wish I understood the difficulties I had with reading and writing before so I could work on them and become more proficient in this field since I have always loved the idea of being a writer. Reading books has been an escape for me for as long as I can remember. I mostly read romance or science-fiction and so one time I wanted to try and write something like this myself. After writing one page of a story I thought up in my head, I learned that this was a lot harder than it looked. I am not very good at expanding on my ideas so, I knew I wasn’t going to be a writer. Even though this wasn’t going to be my future, I want to continue to grow with my writing skills. I’m grateful for this experience though. Without the difficulties I had in high school with reading and writing I may have never fallen in love with math. Something I like to say about math is that it really is its own language and it’s universal. Yes, it is still extremely difficult, but maybe in some weird way I can consider myself to be a writer in the language math someday.