Chris Heath 1998

Bringing it to the Front

Okay, here’s the deal. All I want out of life is happiness. I compromise and sacrifice in my youth so that in the rest of my life I will be happy. At first this happiness was money. Money got me on the go-carts at Funspot and bought me ice cream in the summer, and now happiness is still money. The only difference is that it means security. I can tell that I’m a material person, but I can appreciate all lifestyles and cultures too. But in these days, right now, at least to me, money means security and security means happiness.

I have sacrificed in my youth, but I have also become attached to math. Math and I have a relationship. I love math and math helps me. I might not love it like my mother or my girlfriend, but I’m good at math and it will help me in the future. (The way I see it, I will most likely go to college for a math major of some sort.) My ability to comprehend theoretical ideas and remember them (the hardest part of math, I think) will take me far.

My memory is something that is very strange and complex to me. Sometimes I will remember an instant to the smallest detail, but other times I won’t remember a conversation at all. I believe it has to do with how much what I’m observing means to me. If something means a lot to me, then I will probably remember it more than something I hated. That seems to be an obvious point, but I value class lectures and lessons more than the average conversation in the school halls. This is because of my interest in my own future. My happiness. But anyway, when I concentrate on something, like a lecture, class discussion, or a conversation, my memory rarely fails me. This helps me in math because you have to remember many rules, postulates, formulas, and other operations. To me, it feels like I have these things fresh in my mind, even if I learned them years ago. This helps me a lot. One time in Advanced Math, (actually this has probably happened many times), Mr. Goegel was talking about vectors and explaining them. One of my friends, lets’ call her Allison, wasn’t really getting much of the lesson because she had to keep looking in her book and notes to find out what Mr. Goegel was talking about. I, on the other hand, remembered most of the terms that he taught many lessons ago that were being used in that lesson, so I understood much faster and with much more ease than Allison. This is why I feel that I have an uncommon bond with math, but my nemesis, writing gets me down on myself.

Writing is one of my downsides, definitely. That is why I chose to go to the Advanced Studies Program at St. Paul’s School last summer. It wasn’t for the engineering course, it was for the sole purpose of building confidence and getting better at writing, and maybe someday I will like to write. I don’t like writing because it is very laggard, I prefer articulating much more. When I talk I can indicate my emotions with my facial expressions or tone, but right here all there is to this paper is ink. I do understand though, that writing can have emotions, expressions and tone. I, one day, would love to make someone enraptured by a piece of my work, and that is why I went to St. Paul’s.

Academics brought me there, and I went there for academics, but my passions are not just confined to just school. One of my social powers is my ability to understand and forgive. I can see someone else’s point of view even if I don’t agree with it, but I can accept the fact that that’s where they are coming from and that’s O.K. I’m also known to forgive and forget...a lot. I don’t hold many grudges because I know people make mistakes and when someone does I don’t hold it against them, unless, of course it is serious. Other wise, I’m a very easy going guy, a self describing term.

Another way I would describe myself is: not very patient. I hate to wait in lines, it makes me mad. I also hate traffic jams. One of my loves is driving, it makes me happy. So if I can get out of a traffic jam, even if I get to my destination much later, I would rather drive than wait. Many times my relationship with math and my impaitience gets me frustrated with others who don’t understand as fast, but I’m getting better at that.

I am always working at my flaws because I feel it makes me better. I am always doing this, but I know I will never be flawless. I’m not trying to be perfect, just aiming to be happy later by working now.