Hernan
My name is Hernan, an incoming eighth grade student at the Preuss School UCSD. As Preuss students we follow a couple rules all of them falling under our main three expectations, kindness, respect, and excellence. From then on forward I have followed these three expectations in and outside of school. From my experience in middle school ASB (Associated Student Body), library volunteer taking inventory and participant and vice president of a couple of in school clubs and activities. I have always tried to be a positive person and I think I’ve held that standard up.
I am the youngest of three, which means that I have the privilege of learning from their experiences while also learning from my own mistakes. As a low income family that rarely has money set aside for extracurriculars or hobbies, I have learned to take advantage of a variety of different short term programs and opportunities especially in areas of sports, music and academics. Therefore, trying new things and doing them to the best of my ability is what motivates me the most. I may not succeed or like them but at the end of the day I had fun and learned something new. I am also passionate about helping others, most of what I do now is academic help but from a very young age I have always hoped to someday start a charity of my own to help those in extreme need especially those outside of the United States.
On top of working towards a college acceptance, I look forward to finding opportunities that will allow me to become more involved in nonprofits or charities. One thing I am incredibly proud of is being put into advanced math which allowed me to take a math course one year ahead of what seventh graders are meant to learn. Not only is math my favorite subject but being placed in advanced math opened up the opportunity for me to finish my math requirements earlier and have the possibility to take college level courses in high school. Math will always be an important part of my career goals so being good at it is only a bonus as I have a lot of fun tackling new challenging concepts. Learning in class is great but attempting to learn more advanced math topics outside of school makes it fun and eventually helps me out in the classroom. I can confidently say that math has improved my perseverance and studying skills which is great because I can apply them to other classes as well.
Throughout my life I have always kept a high standard when it comes to academic excellence and have always kept my word but I have many other interests as well. I enjoy playing sports and staying active. I like playing most sports like volleyball and soccer but my favorite is lacrosse as I found it fun to learn from my older brother. I enjoy playing sports for leisure as opposed to competitively. I have a couple of other casual hobbies that I like but don’t have the opportunity to do often due to time. On occasions I like baking and cooking simple dishes with my family, especially during fun holidays like halloween and christmas. I also have an interest in collecting and learning about rocks and crystals which is why I joined the rocks and minerals club in school. I also have a couple of different rubix cubes that I like solving. I have found a good use of them when taking study breaks instead of electronics. Fun fact from my math teacher that I constantly think about, there are more ways to scramble a rubix cube than there are atoms on earth.
Academically, I plan to continue to uphold my GPA this upcoming year and improve my study habits heading into high school. I also hope to stay more involved in school activities, maybe pick back up interests that I had the chance to try a couple of years ago, like music when I take orchestra this upcoming year. I also enjoyed my leadership roles during ASB this past year, particularly helping with sales during school events and putting together school socials where we worked together to make games and activities to improve our mental health during the school year.
Looking forward I hope to use some of what I learned during ASB and become a peer counselor which means I would have the opportunity to help my peers with academic work or personal worries they may have. In the future I have interest in pursuing a major in engineering to hopefully help with better safety preparations for when an earthquake happens in California both in building materials and alarm systems. This is what interests me at this moment, however it will more than likely change as I get the opportunity to take more science and engineering classes in high school.
As an ending statement, I want to thank you for the opportunity A Bridge for Kids is giving me to apply to the program. I have taken the time to glance at the organizations social media profiles and if accepted into the program I look forward to participating in the yearly activities and use any funds given to me to move towards my goals and aspirations of academic success and hobbies especially sports and music