Two College Questions

The first question I will answer is the tell me about yourself question. My name is Fayem Khan and I was born in Bangladesh on December 28, 1992. I came to the United States at around the age of one and a half. My parents owned a restaurant in a small hamlet called Pine Hill in upstate new York. My parents set up another restaurant in New Paltz in 2003 and I Moved up there in 2007. I now attend New Paltz High School, where I run track. Sports are an important part of my life, but I do not seem to have enough time to participate in them. nevertheless I also plan to run cross country next year. I feel regret for the fact I never played soccer in high school because I had a natural talent for that sport. I could not play as many sports as I wanted to because of my workload this year. I am taking a couple of AP classes and I also doubled up on science, taking Physics and Chemistry. The reason I doubled up on science is because it is my best subject and I am planning on majoring in it in Collage. So far I am doing very well in all my classes, so next year I am further increasing the difficulty by taking more AP classes and AP Bio. The reason I am doing this is because a lot of what I do in high school affects what i am going to be able to do in the future. Oh and I also like to challenge myself so that is another reason why I am doing this. As my father says everything worth having is only attainable through hard work and determination.


The next question I am going to talk about is who in your life has most influenced you question. There are two people, my mother and my father who have both influenced me equally. My father influenced me a lot through his business. He started out with nothing in a foreign country, but after years of hard work he now owns a couple of restaurants. He taught me again and again that the key to success is hard work. If a person sets goals they have to work hard and eventually they will succeed. He has shown me how business work and how to take advantage of certain aspects of it to further my goals. He is helping me to get ready for the world outside of high school. While my father has been doing that, it is my mother who influences my personality. My father can be blunt and very strict sometimes, but my mother is always kind. She has taught me to respect people and to be kind to everyone around yourself. She also taught me to never judge a person based on appearance and to always broaden my mind. These lessons have helped me to make many friends and keep my temper( inherited from both parents) under control easily. I can understand the odd actions that others may make more easily and can see points to both sides of an argument through my father and mother's influence. My father and mother are the people I respect and love the most. They are helping me to achieve my goals and to live a better life.

Poetry

I like to read poetry, but I hate to write it. Its just very difficult for me to write good poetry and it takes to much time to do. I also kinda of hate interpreting poetry because that takes the fun out of reading poetry. I have a hard time doing this because I am the type of person who has trouble analyzing the deeper meaning in poems. It annoys me and I get angry when I miss something that other people say was so easy to get. OK enough about that.

My favorite poets would have to be John Milton and Robert Frost. John Milton is one of my favorite poets because I did my poetry project on him. I found it interesting that he wrote Paradise Lost, a ten book epic poem, after he became blind. I read and liked some his poems, such as On His Blindness. It was a very emotional poem with a lot of heart. What can I say about Robert Frost. He is probably the most well known American poet. He read at J.F.K.s inauguration and was celebrated as one of the best poet of his time. Two poems I really liked from him are Nothing Gold Can Stay and The Road Not Taken. These two poems are short and simple, but have a strong deeper meaning. They both have important life lessons of the path a person should take and how everything, no matter how good or bad, ends. Poetry is important literature and sometimes a good way to release emotions.

Technology

Technology is changing the way that people read literature. It is stated that only 9 percent of what we read comes from print in an article that I read. This is mainly due to the fact that we have devices such as netbooks, ipads, and e-readers. These devices of course would not work without the Internet, which is the largest factor in this trend. The Internet also impacts how we interact with literature and each other through social networking sites, such as facebook or through sites such as sparknotes. This technology has impacted my literacy, along with every other person with Internet connection. I find myself reading from Internet new reports instead of newspapers and getting sports updates from a sports websites instead of sports magazines. One reason I do this is because the technology makes finding and reading stuff a lot faster and easier then without it. It saves me time, which is very valuable in my sometimes hectic schedule. Even though technology has impacted my literacy greatly, it has not complete changed it. I have never considered reading novels online or from e-readers. This is because reading a novel calls for a book, not an electrical device. These devices can be faulty or easily damaged, while a book is not as easily damaged. I am not saying that technology is bad, all I am saying is that it is changing how we read and what we read.

My literacy by Mr.Khan

I do not recall my parents or anybody in my family reading to me during my childhood. :( This stems from the fact that my parents had to work a lot back then. Despite this I could read very well by first grade, but I was more interested in making Lego buildings then reading. I first gained an interest in reading when I was in second grade. My second grade teacher Mrs. Carl encouraged me to read books, such as Dinosaurs Before Dark and Little Bear. These books lead to more books and pretty soon I was taking home five books per week from the local library. During this time I realized that the books I liked the best were non fiction books set into the future or the ancient world. These books fascinated me and stretched my imagination to the limit in way that I never could have thought possible. This is what lead to my discovery of the value of reading and I now love reading a wide variety of materials (excluding the AP. U.S. textbook).

A Thousand Splendid Suns

I am currently reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan author who is best known for his other novel The Kite Runner. I consider A Thousand Splendid Suns a great novel because of its unusual plot. Its just very different from anything I have ever read. It details the lives of two very different Afghan women, who were born a generation apart, that are forced to live together during the Soviet take over and following wars with the Taliban. This highlights their differences and struggles to overcome religious and sexual barriers. The novel is divided mainly into four parts. Each part containing information on one of the women's lives until the last two parts were the story comes together. This novel is also rated very highly by many book reviewers. Some even said it was better then The Kite Runner. I would recommend this novel to anyone because its a good read, Therese no denying that.