Journals
September, 2020
My name is Eidhan Santana and I’m a high school senior at Sports and Medical Sciences Academy. It is September 2020 and I like that I’m back in school, I felt a little bored at home doing nothing for so long. I also like the new hybrid schedule. I go to school on Mondays and Tuesdays and Stay home Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I like how when school is over on Fridays I just hop back onto my bed. I don’t have capstone this semester and I’m happy about it because I don't know what I’m going to do. My classes are all small except for my fourth block which has at least 10 students. There are a lot of Covid protocols in the school, you have to sanitize your hands every time you enter a classroom, masks at all times, no water fountains, you can only come and go from the red stairs, everyone must be socially distanced, and only one set of bathrooms. I know this is for the safety of the teachers and students, but some of these protocols are a little bit annoying. I like the way Mr. Mraz teaches, he makes pre-calculus easier and generally I don’t like math because I’m not very good at it. Right now I don’t know when everything is going to return to normal but I plan to enjoy my last year here at SMSA.
December, 2020
My name is Eidhan Santana and I’m a high school senior at Sports and Medical Sciences Academy. It is December 2020 and I have no idea what to do for my capstone project. I was thinking I would do something involving library science in 10th grade, we were required to do 10 hours of community service and I chose to help out at a library close to my home. Due to Covid-19 many libraries have closed down and now I have no idea what to do for my project. When I first heard in middle school that if you didn’t do your capstone you would not pass high school I felt kind of irritated and I still am. I know that it is to help our community but why do we have to create a whole project out of it and present it to people. Right now I have applied to college thanks to the help of Mrs. Rubelmann and I feel really excited. I'm also in the middle of filling out scholarship applications and trying my best to meet the requirements for the Hartford promise by going to school everyday. I hope that by the time I go to college that everything goes back to normal, it's not going to be the same but at least it will be closer to normal. When we started online school I was kind of happy that I didn’t have to go to school everyday because I was kind of tired of having to wake up and go to school, but now I kind of miss when there were a lot of people in the hallways and the jokes some kids made in class. It’s like the quote says “ you don’t appreciate what you have until it's gone” I always interpreted that phrase as losing a family member that you should have been a little nicer to, got along better with your friends, or something you should have paid more attention to, but I now understand that it also applies to experiences, maybe when I'm in college and am having a rough time I will think about how high school was better and that I took for granted the time I spent there.
January, 2021
My name is Eidhan Santana and I am a high school senior at Sports and Medical Sciences Academy, in this month of January I have been feeling very stressed and very tired, I have to do either a project or an essay for 4 of my classes and I’m feeling kind of stressed out. The second semester is also starting and I still have no idea what to do for my capstone, I still have the library idea but I don’t know what to do about it. I kind of regret not starting my capstone or reaching out to someone earlier, but I guess I’ll have to give it my best effort in the second semester. I recently got a pet leopard gecko, I named it Eren after a character in a show me and my sister watched. I still don’t know if it's a girl or a boy but if it's a girl I can just change it to Erin. School overall has been boring for me, I sometimes don’t pay attention in class because I’m either looking at my phone or daydreaming. Only when I am in person do I feel like I'm actually paying attention in class. I used to think that being online is better than being in person but the only benefit of being online is that you can wake up a little later than usual and that you can be comfortable in your bed, otherwise there is no benefit because you are easily distracted while in class. I feel that people who are really social and depend on their friends are the ones that are suffering from Covid, although they might text each other or talk through the phone it is not the same as being face to face. With proms and trips being cancelled a lot of kids are missing out on important things in their lives, I
think this applies especially to young kids who can’t be with their friends. I think this lack of contact between kids will cause some kind of problem in the future where a lot of these kids will become socially awkward.
February, 2021
It is February and I feel a little bit calmer than last semester. I have an idea for my capstone project and that is tutoring people for the citizenship exam. I already reached out to the Hartford public library and they have agreed that I could volunteer there. Since I speak English and Spanish I have an advantage. Speaking of Spanish, I have to take the test for the seal of biliteracy this month and I’m nervous, for some reason when I get nervous my accent comes out and I forget how to speak Spanish a little bit. I hope that I can start doing field work soon. I like my classes this semester and I find it more enjoyable. I like Mckay’s class because I have been meaning to work out but lacked the motivation but now that it is being graded, I feel more motivated to do it. I feel that I'm steadily improving when I'm working out and that I'm feeling more motivated to workout. I think that I’m doing ok academically right now but I think that I can improve a little bit but I don’t know how. The one year anniversary of us being on lockdown is creeping up on us, it feels kind of crazy that a year has passed since all the lockdown and masks started. Even after Covid I feel that everything will not go back to normal throughout the world.
March, 2021
My name is Eidhan Santana and I am a senior at sports and medical sciences academy. The day I’m writing this is Thursday April 1st, the month of march was really weird but good at the same time. First of all there is no hybrid schedule anymore so I have to come to school every, I was kind of frustrated because I liked the hybrid schedule and I would have liked that it remained like that for the whole school year. The district is also talking about bringing in the remote students, but I don’t think most of them would like to come back, I personally wouldn’t! I believe the district did this because there are many students who struggle with online learning and learn better in person. I started my fieldwork this month too, I met with my mentor Nancy Caddigan and we talked about the things I would be doing when I’m tutoring. Unfortunately the person I was supposed to tutor decided to not take the citizenship test, so I have to wait for someone else, on the bright side every Saturday I’m attending a 2 hour online class with Mrs. Lacoss where she helps people prepare for the exam, she also helps with dictation. Right now I have five and a half hours of research, I hope everything goes well. School is going well for me right now, I was accepted to UCONN Hartford and CCSU. I’m thinking about going to MCC for two years and then transferring to CCSU to save money. I’m thinking of majoring in computer science and maybe go into cybersecurity or something related to computer science. For my career field research I plan to interview Mr. Zea because he studied in the computer science area and he also attended CCSU so I hope he can give me some advice.
April, 2021
This month has been the most productive month in my capstone. My mentor Nancy Caddigan, found a couple who wanted to take the citizenship exam. Their names are Marcos and Cedalia and they are from Peru, they are a very nice couple who have been in the United States for 50 years. I was pretty nervous at first but now I’m used to teaching them and they are doing a pretty good job so far with memorizing the questions. I interviewed Mr. Zea and it went pretty good, I learned a lot about computer science and the environment around the field. I also learned about how colleges take anyone with different levels of education, which I felt relieved about because I only know a little bit about programming but this summer I plan to study a lot so I can be prepared for it when I go to college. My spring break was pretty boring, I just stayed home and worked a little bit on my presentation and because of Covid, I couldn’t visit my grandmother. I don’t know when I can get vaccinated but I want it to be as soon as possible. So I can visit my family more. It was my sister and my cousin's birthday this month. They both have the same birthday on the 25th but my sister was born in 2005 and my cousin was born in 2006.
At first I was scared about Capstone but now I think I am prepared to make my e-portfolio, But I am a little bit nervous for presentations in May.