Inspiring Youth: Angelica M. Prendez

The message that young people are being sent is that the more we party the cooler we are. Young people are given poor examples from reality shows and the media. It seems like we are all expected to binge drink and sleep around every weekend with out considering the repercussions, wasting our energy and our time. 

Energy and time, that could go into something which involves getting us some how one step closer to living out our dreams!

Due to lack of inspiration, I would like to officially start something called Inspiring Youth. 

At least once a month I am going to dedicate a post to some one who is spending the "prime of their life" doing something meaningful. It time to shine the spotlight on better Role Models of Today!

I could think of no one better to start with than 21 year old Latina, Angelica M. Prendez.

 Angelica loved modeling and being in front of the camera even as a little girl. She dreamed of one day being able to show people that inner beauty counts just as much, if not more, than outward appearances. She learned how to set and realize her goals appearing in local fashion shows and beauty pageants. 

 

(Photo Shoot)

 

(A Night in Rio Fashion Show) 

 

(Photo Shoot with Jose Gomez) 

You can see that she is no stranger to not only reaching for the stars, but plucking them out of the sky! Recently she made the decision to audition for the popular Latin American beauty pageant TV show, Nuestra Belleza Latina. 

She trained and practiced and prepared for the audition day and she was there bright and early to face the challenges of the day head on!

Values are the core to any successful person. In order to be successful in mapping out the future, you have to know who you are, where you come from, and what you stand for. When I asked Angelica what she believed in, she replied,

" I believe in doing good, because when you're a good person at heart and give off positive energy, good things happen."

It is also important to accept that sometimes the door might close before you get there. But where one door closes another one is opened, and occasionally a closed door unlocks in time. Angelica did not make it to the final round of the audition process but she did not hang her head. Instead she is certain that there are better opportunities to come! 

For people like her there is no such thing as failure, only slight setbacks. What makes Angie so inspiring is her determination to follow the path to success no matter what the obstacle! She stated,

" I didn't make it into the last round but this is only the beginning!"

 Remember her face because you will definitely be seeing it again soon!

Being Mixed in America: Payton's "Wrongful Birth"

Recently, I came across some news that I found troubling, but not for the reasons you might think. 

In Uniontown, Ohio Jennifer Cramblett and her wife, Amanda Zinkon, are suing a sperm bank on the grounds of "wrongful birth". Apparently, the sperm bank mixed up the sperm donors, and Cramblett was inseminated with the sperm of a black male instead of a white male, as the couple would have preferred. What was the result?

A beautiful little girl.

Payton.

 

What upsets me the most about this, is that the consequences of her parents actions will effect Payton for the rest of her life. 

Some of you might not know this, but I am half black, half Puerto Rican. Growing up as a mixed raced child can be confusing, like it was for me, if your parents are not prepared to embrace both sides of the culture that makes you who you are. In my case, I grew up in a single parent home, with my mother, a darker skinned Puerto Rican, and my older brother who's complexion is lighter than mine.

If you know anything about Puerto Rico, you would understand that Puerto Ricans come in all colors of the rainbow. Unfortunately, as much as people try to turn a blind eye towards it, racism is still present in America. At that time, in the late 90's and early 2000's, it was especially present among children. Of course most kids in my elementary school didn't know anything about Puerto Rico; you were either white, black, Hispanic, or Asian. Because of my darker complexion, I was classified as black. 

In those times kids divided themselves in to little groups based on who looked the most like them. When I moved to Raleigh, NC and started the second grade, of course I was eager to make new friends, but I quickly discovered that "fitting in" would be harder than I thought. I am introverted by nature, as a child I was kind of shy. I would sit back and observe my peers rather than express myself a loud. Some of the black kids took that as a sign of weakness and bullied me. Kids can be cruel. Because I was dark skinned and I spoke Spanish with an accent, I was excluded by the Hispanic kids as well. After a while, I started to hang out with the white kids, and though they did not reject me, I realized that I was treated a little differently when we were playing, or by some of their parents. 

I just could not understand why making friends was so difficult for me. 

Knowing all this, I feel nothing but pity for little Payton. Eventually she is going to ask her mothers why she doesn't look exactly like them and they are going to have to give her an answer. I can not, nor do I want to, imagine what their response is going to be. What is worse, is that there is a whole part of her identity that she will not have the chance to explore until she is older, unless her mothers make the effort to explain to her the importance of African American culture. I hope that things have changed, and that children will be more sensitive towards her in school, as many of them will probably be of mixed race as well. But the problem is that her mothers are treating her being of mixed race as a disadvantage. During an interview with NBC News Jennifer tearfully stated, "I don't find any problems with having a mixed-race child as far as I am concerned. Payton will understand it wasn't about, 'We didn't want you. We wanted a white baby.' That wasn't what it was about." 

But will she understand?

One day, she is going to find out that her mothers sued the sperm bank because they "faced adversity" due to the fact that she is half black. The lawsuit states that the family has experienced unnecessary "personal injuries, medical expenses, pain, suffering, emotional distress and other economic and non-economic issues, and will do so in the future. How will that make her feel? 

How would it make you feel?

It is 2014. 

By now we should have accepted the fact that nobody can help the way they look, no one gets to chose their skin color, and therefore no one should be persecuted, get special privileges, or be treated differently because of it. 

Stating it simply, race should no longer be a social issue.

We are all HUMAN.

Watch the news clip below and decide for yourself. 

Beautiful Revolution: Hong Kong

ITS TIME FOR A REVOLUTION!! 

At least some people have the courage to stand together peacefully and demand to be given rights they deserve! 

Isn't it a beautiful thing when youth comes together to do something positive to help their country!

  

I just can't believe that we are living in a time of monumental and radical historic events such as this one. 

  

Yes, this is history in the making, this is what we will tell our grandchildren, this is our world NOW!

Thunderclap!

Click Here to THUNDERCLAP!  

I need your help everyone! I have been so blessed to have developed so many supporters in such a short amount of time; I cannot even being to describe how grateful I am. 

But when I started this blog, I had a few goals in mind. One of them was promoting my writing so that people would be more interested in and aware of my first self-published book Liars Like Me. It worked, but not as well as I hoped so I am trying to do things that will promote it even MORE. 

Enter Thunderclap! 

Thunderclap is an AMAZING website that helps ordinary people get extraordinary promotion and the best part is that is is all 100% FREE!! 

All I have to do is raise 100 supporters in 19 days! 

Click Here to THUNDERCLAP!  

All you have to do is click on the link at the top of this post, and then click the BIG red button that says support with Facebook, Tumblr, or Twitter! It is that simple! By doing so, you will brings us on step closer to the goal and soon more people than I could have ever imagined will know about the book! 

Click Here to THUNDERCLAP!  

If you feel like going above and beyond those easy requirements, you can also copy the link in to your Tumblr, Facebook, or Twitter status and share it for all your friends to see as well!  

Please show your support and help my dream come true! 

You will never be able to understand how much those 2 clicks will means to me!

I would also like to quickly thank, Carmel, Emily, Chris, Lucia, and Amanda for being the first to support my goal. Thank you so much guys! You really put the friend in friendship! =D

Click Here to THUNDERCLAP! 

Throw Back Thursday!

It has been a while since I took a stroll down Memory Lane! =) 

What a blessed life I've had so far!!!

When Parents Turn to Murder: Issy

When I began to read the article on The Daily Beast about a mother, Kelli Stapleton, who tried to kill her autistic daughter, Issy, my first thought was, how could any mom feel such strong feelings against their own child? Strong enough to want to murder them? Even in the most extreme case, I feel that the love that a mother has for her child is strong enough to overcome any desire to murder anyone for risk of losing that child. 

In this case, people were upset because Kelli was being understood by Dr. Phil as he interviewed her trying to gain perspective and insight. 

Issy Stapleton has autism, and her mother was feeling overwhelmed. She was at the end of her rope, but does that really excuse what she tried to do? No. 

I do not know what it is like to have a child with autism, because I have never gone through the experience. But I have know many people with autism. 

My first encounter was when I was in the 6th grade. There was a red headed boy named Carl, who was a little different from the other kids. I noticed that he did things differently, and he interacted differently. A lot of my friend made fun of him, or tried to avoid him, but I was curios and sympathetic. I talked to him and often sat at his table in class. As a result of that, my teacher would often place him with me during group activities because I was more sensitive to his condition (which I was unaware of at the time). It was not until we were doing a science experiment that involved a golf ball that I truly understood that he had a disability. We had a disagreement regarding the next steps that should be followed and he ended up throwing the golf ball at my hand. I was upset, but more than anything I was confused. Finally, the teacher pulled me aside and explained to me that Carl has autism and that he thinks differently than everyone else, because of that he dealt with things differently and sometimes irrationally when he did not know how to express himself. 

Later on in middle school, I met another kid with autism. Him name was Brandon. I was interested in him because he was cute and funny. Sure he was a little different, but the curious thing about Brandon was that I had no idea that he had autism until he actually told me. Which didn't really change how I felt about him. Of course I never said anything about my little crush because I was a shy kid, but we remained friends and still talk occasionally on Facebook to this day. 

My point is, the solution to autism is awareness. People fear and reject what they do not understand. I am not saying that Kelli was not doing the best that she could, but there is always another way to deal with a person in that situation. Sometimes, instead of trying to pull them into our world, we should try to step into theirs.

Also, don't try to kill your child! Never ever! If you feel overwhelmed, like you don't want to deal with them anymore, there are plenty of other things you can do. Adoption, foster care, leaving them with a responsible loving family member. All are much more SANE alternatives than trying to kill yourself and your kid.

You can watch part of the episode below and decide for yourself. 

How Students REALLY Feel About Group Presentations

 

For the love of GOD, if you are a professor and you are reading this, please please please please please STOP giving your students group projects. PLEASE!

Okay, maybe that is a little unreasonable. But it seems like for the past 4 years I have been forced to work with irresponsible and selfish people who either leave everything for the last minute, or who skip out on their part of the project only to leave me to finish all of the work. The funny thing, is that most professors do not care, and insist on making it a group grade anyway. 

First of all, if you are professor know this, WE PREFER TESTS!!!!! 

I understand that you get tired of lecturing the class. Sometimes you want to just sit back and watch a nice presentation, but it is NOT our job to teach our fellow classmates. Nor do they care about what one another has to say. They only care about their grade and how they are going to do when they stand up to present. If they are paying attention, 9 times out of 10 its due to common courtesy.

Now, because teachers and professors are probably NEVER going to stop with this, no matter how much we INSIST that we hate it, if you are in a group to do a presentation or project,  BE CONSIDERATE! 

Do not procrastinate of the your portion of the work. Why? Because, something could go wrong, you won't have time to fix it, and someone will have to fix it for you because they don't want you to drag their grade down. Do what you have to do, as soon as possible. We all are busy, we all have priorities and things that we need to get done. That being said, respect the time of your group members. It is not fair to thrust your responsibilities on someone who has responsibilities of their own.

When you leave your group hanging, they get stressed, overwhelmed, frustrated and angry. Which is completely understandable. We ALL know how hard it is because we are ALL going through it. Let's work TOGETHER, instead of for ourselves. 

People are counting on you.  

DO NOT LET THEM DOWN!