Q – Andrew what would you say goes in to indentifying one’s true I or answering the question what is “I”?
A- A person trying to figure out who they are as a person can be a very frustrating and complicated thing to do. I could sit here and rattle off things like my hobbies or my physical appearance but does that answer who I am as a person. The length of my hair or types of clothes I wear doesn’t fully explain who I am. The process or influences of events is what shaped me to be who I am today. By looking and evaluating my writings in English will help me see my self as a whole. These papers were written to reflect one of the 5 senses, and are your senses not the very thing that let perceive the world how it is. Don’t you need these senses to take in all the events and influences that make you as a person? When answering the question, what is “I”, I think that person needs to look back on his who life and ask why do like what I like? Why is this my favorite thing to wear? All the answers lie in those influences in life. Through out this interview I’m going to ask my self all these questions and answer them through my writings. This is how you answer what “I” is.
Q – How do your essays and blogs help explain how you are who you are today?
A- Well they don’t tell me who I am directly but after reading them and thinking about why I wrote what I wrote helps me identify myself. Before this writing class I had no idea I could be so creative. In high school I was so use to writing these papers on complete bullshit and had no choice. This class gave me so much freedom to find myself as a writer. I was able to bring out my creativity my own way. I got to pick what genres interested me and write about topics I can relate to. If I was told to write a research paper on Descartes and what kind of man he was, then told write another research paper about the sport skateboarding and how it came about now, which one would be better? Obviously the one I can relate to. This freedom let write things I never would get to. Since I wrote about topics I wanted to write about it makes sense to look back ask why I wrote them and see how it shows who I am. If I was told to write so many papers about the stupid things teachers usually give us, then as our selves why we wrote that, it would simply be because the teacher told us to. Those papers won’t say anything about me, it was written just for a grade. My blogs and writings we created by my mind and your mind builds over time based on things that you want to take in. That is how they reflect who I am.
Q – What do your blogs say about you, or why did you choose to write what you wrote?
A – All of these blogs were based of our 5 senses in some way and the prompts were very open letting write about anything. There was also a lot of workshops posted that we conducted then wrote about. The types of things I chose to write about is are things that I believe to cherish more than others. One of my favorite blogs to re-read was an entry about mistaken a friends dog as my dog. We were supposed to us a visual example of seeing something that was really part of reality. I knew right away before starting the paper I was going to write about that experience. My dogs have always meant a lot to me but I never thought of why. Why did I create my own voice that only comes out around them? Why do I miss my dogs more than my actual family? Why did I choose to bring one photo to college and that photo being of my dogs? FINISH
Q – Its understood that you are a huge fan of music, how did you come about this passion?
A – Music and Guitar are two things in my life right now that are taking control. I wrote a series of journal entries based on the actual events of how I came to be where I am now with the guitar. Also I think music in general runs in my blood. My dad played guitar and so did his father, but I always hear from them how much better I was getting. Guitar just started out as a present that I wanted to learn because I thought girls would love it. Little did I know that over the next 6 years it would become my life. In a journal entry I said, “There is not one day that goes by when I don’t touch my guitar at least 5 times. As I’m sitting here now writing this diary entry, my guitar strapped on and ready to go.” Guitar wasn’t always like that for me. At first I spent a lot of time just looking at it getting frustrated on how hard it was to learn. I didn’t even want to take the time to learn it anymore, but one day everything changed. I finally learned to read tabs and learned my first song. It was favorite Blink 182 song and I played for a friend. When he named the song I was playing was the turning point in guitar. I was able to find play something. Over the last few years I have been devoting a lot of time to learning guitar theory finger exercises. I know that my love for music has grown through my learning of the guitar. I now listen to the guitar in songs and not just hear. There certain songs that as soon as I hear that guitar it’s like goose bumps. I am a kid who always has his guitar in his hands. When I walk in my dorm, the first thing I do is get my guitar and bring it to whatever I’m doing. If I have to go to the bathroom, I pass the time playing a tune on the toilet. Guitar is what turned me into a music lover.
Q – What else has had a big influence on who you are?
A – Well recently I have gone through a major surgery that changed me in many ways after. I have this ridiculously big scar that I see on my stomach everyday to remind me of those months. I had surgery on my pancreas the road to recovery has made me a stronger person in so many ways. The Constant pain I faced everyday just from standing to laying was enough to not leave my bed for almost a month straight. I was unaware of how bad your body hurts after getting a major surgery. The doctor had to cut through my entire abdomen slicing all the existing muscles. I spent day after day hoping to feel less pain and it was there for so long I can’t even remember when is finally dissipated. Though working on getting better, and seeing the incision heal up was changing process. I use to think I was never going to be the same active kid. Several months had gone by and each day finally seemed to get better. The scar began to stretch and feel less and less painful. I was able to go out of the house and go hang out with friends again. Life was returning back to normal. The biggest thing that this surgery showed me is what I can over come as a person and get back to where I want to be. I feel like I can over come anything now after this experience. All the pains I use to feel before surgery no long hurt as bad now. I just think back to the pain I had of 18 inch incision with 28 staples holding my stomach together and it makes anything else feel like nothing. I know that I made a full recovery and can recover from any other event that is to come in my life. I took this surgery that life threw at me, worked through it, recovered and became a stronger person as a whole ready to take on anything else. Even an auto ethnography.
Q – Didn’t you say in one essay that you see your environment differently than most people? How is this so?
A – Well there is another hobby in my life that caused me to see everything the way I see it. I’ve also been skateboarding for many years in my life. Skateboarders are constantly looking for new and different things to skate. In order to find new things to skate you got to go out and look. If you asked someone who never skated to go found me skate spots they would most likely look for a skate park. That’s not all there is to skate though. Me being a skater I can see buildings or parks and find ways to skate them. It could be a set of stairs, maybe some kind of incline or a rail. I have a skater’s eye. Through my experiences skating helped me develop my skater’s eye. When I am in any new area I constantly scope the scene to see what I can skate and can’t. Even if a spot isn’t really skate able I can find a way to make it fun. It is so hard to stress how much I constantly looking everyday objects and thinking how I can skate. I can see a curb with a curve, or a like a broken sidewalk that turns it into a ramp and belike I want to skate that. My years of skating have turned me into this kid that subconsciously creates skate spots. I can bet that if anyone were to pick up an extreme sport that they would get this “eye” that I talk about. Or asked someone you know that Skates, Bikes, snowboards, anything like that and see if see like I do. Also ask them why they see like that and I’m fairly certain you get an answer like the one I just provided.
