Interview

I got to interview a girl named Martha Herrera. Martha has two older sister, one finished with her studies and the other one about to finish, and two younger brothers. She still lives with her parents, but she doesn't depend on them to provide her with what she needs. Martha gets her own money by working part-time at The Habit. Her motivation to attend college is her two older sisters. She has a busy schedule, she works in the mornings and comes to school in the afternoons but gets through it all with a positive attitude and just balances everything out. Her role models are her sisters and her dad, who came from Mexico with nothing and now owns his own business, and she sees herself as a role model to her little brother. She describes herself as positive, hard-working, and motivated. In ten years, she would like to have her degree and her own house but she knows it's going to be stressful at times. What she likes the most about Oxnard College is that we get to pick our own schedules and there's tutoring for almost every subject. The reason she wants to be successful in her studies is because none of her family members, besides her sisters, have went to college and she wants to prove that she can do it.

Bye Bye Jetta

 My first car had a special place in my heart, just as everybody else's first car did. My reason, however, was because I will never forget the day my parents surprised me with it as a gift they bought me with their money. It was on the same day that I got my driver's license. What this meant was, if anybody asked me when I bought it, I could just pull out my license and I could tell them the exact date. The exact date was on the fourth of April, 2011. The hardest decision I ever had with this car was having to get rid of it.

Ever since day one of using my 2001 Volkswagen Jetta, I knew it was the perfect first car. It was everything I wanted in a car. It was a 4-door, didn't have too many miles, and it ran like it was supposed to. As time passed by, I got more and more used to it. I would literally drive around all of Oxnard in it and sometimes to the Ventura Pacific View Mall, and about a whole summer I would go to work to Camarillo every weekday from Monday through Friday. Everything was good until the engine started making this noise less than a year after I got it. Starting to worry, I took the car to my dad, who knows his mechanics. He told me it was going to need a new water pump and timing belt. My dad told me it was going to be mostly the timing belt. We both pitched in to gather a timing belt kit that cost us around $105 and worked on the car together, along with his friend that happened to be a mechanic. Once that was all said and done, the noise went away. Happy as I could be, I was once again cruising in my Jetta. A month later, the noise comes back and I had the hardest choice of my 19 year old life to make.

“You either sell it, or keep spending money fixing it,” my dad said.

“I'll think about it,” I replied.

The next few days were spent in my room doing nothing but thinking. I had finally got a car of my own and now I had to choose whether I wanted to sell it or keep spending more money than I should on it. A lot of thinking was done before I started to sell it. As I saw it, this was an opportunity to get a new car. With my mind made up, I went to my dad to tell him what I decided.

“I'm putting it on Craigslist,” I said.

“Fine with me.”

That night, I put an ad to sell my car and just waited for phone calls. Finally, I got a call and it was from a man that was looking to buy the car for his son. We greeted each other with a simple hello and took the conversation from there.

“I'm calling about the Jetta, do you still have it?” He asked.

“Yes, I barely put that ad up last night.”

“Okay, great. Has anybody smoked in it? Have any pets been inside of it? Any accidents? What's the mileage on it?” He asked all at once.

Having a hard time remembering all of the questions, I answered as best as I could.

“No smokers, no pets, no accidents, and 143,000 miles.”

“Great, I'll go take a look at it in about an hour,” he said as we hung up the phones.

I waited for him at my house patiently. I was nervous and all that was running through my head was could this be my last day with the car I had always wanted? I was really nervous until the man showed up and took it for a test drive. When he got back, I asked him what he thought about it.

“It seems good but I think I'll call my mechanic so he can come see it before I make any decisions,” was how he responded.

He never showed up again. The good thing was that I kept getting at least four or five calls regarding my car every day. The bad thing, however, was that they would all end up telling me the same thing. Each and every one of them would tell me that they wanted their mechanic to take a look at it first. Just like the first guy, none would ever come back. This happened so much, that I got used to it and still expected to have my car for a lot longer. One day, however, I got a call from a guy and he seemed more interested than all the others that came before him. The reason I say this is because he went to my house to see the Volkswagen right away when he got out of work.

Being used to nobody buying it, I was just expecting this guy test drive it and leave, just like everybody else had done. When he arrived at my house, he wasn't alone. The man that wanted the car was short and Mexican. He came with another man that was dressed in mechanic clothes. This other man was his mechanic. Standing on my driveway, I opened up the doors to the car so they could take a look inside of it. While they took it for a test drive, I stayed on my driveway just looking at them while the palm trees were moving side to side due to the wind. Once they came back, they were still interested in taking the car.

“What's the cheapest you'll give it?” Asked the man that wanted it.

“Well $3,200 isn't a lot, bro.”

“I'll give you $2,800 right now.”

As soon as he said that, I knew the car was no longer going to be mine. With hesitation, I called my dad to help me make the choice. My dad came outside and they started a conversation about the price.

“I'm telling your son that I'll give him $2,800 right now on the spot.”

“Well it's a good car and it doesn't have that many miles, give him at least $3,000.”

“$2,900 and it's off your hands now.”

“Deal,” my dad said while I stood there in disbelief.

The man handed me the money and he and my dad filled out the paperwork. Once they were done, the man drove away with the first car I had ever had as I waved goodbye to it. Less than a year later after getting it, I no longer had a car, but I had the money for a new one. Even though I was carless for over a month, all the money was used to buy my current 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid. Thanks to that car, I have no regrets about my decision to sell the 2001 Volkswagen Jetta. My Civic is all the Jetta was, and more.

Texting

Texting can be either good or bad depending on how you use it and when. The good things about texting can be when you’re too busy, you can easily write and send a text. Even if your phone is out of minutes to talk, most plans come with unlimited messaging so you can still communicate when you can’t talk on the phone. A lot of people have the ability to send text messages to other people, more than the people that have house phones. The reason I think this is so is because people would rather send a text than answer the phone and be there distracted not being able to do anything else. With texts, you can simply send one and do something else while you wait for that person to respond.

The bad thing about texting, however, is that it can be very distracting, and it has even caused lives. The way that it causes lives the most is when people text and drive. Texting and driving isn’t a good combination and it is very dangerous. A person can be reading a text message that says “hi” and when they look up, there’s another car right in front of them and they can crash and get seriously injured, or may even die. Even though texting can be a good thing, it can also be a bad thing and one has to have a limit of how much and when they text. Texting too much can become a big distraction no matter where it’s done.

Reality Television

Reality television has never really played a big role in my life. Growing up with a Mexican family, the only thing close to reality television that has been watched in our household is novelas, or Mexican soap operas. My mom would always, and still does, watch them each and every night until the last one was over. They never caught my attention, until now. Ever since I got with my girlfriend, she would spend her afternoons watching them. When I would go visit her and my son, her whole family would be in the living room watching their novelas. I didn’t pay much attention to them, but one day I finally gave them a chance. It got really interesting and I have been watching them with her ever since. Even though we all know reality TV is fake, it can still catch a person’s attention with suspense and just wanting to know what’s going to happen next.

                Another thing that my girlfriend got me into watching is Teen Mom. Being teen parents ourselves, we figured we would give the show a chance to see if we could relate to anything going on in the show. As stated before, it’s all fake. The reason we started watching it was to see if we could relate, but that was definitely not the case. In the show, the mom and dad of the baby are either no longer together, or there is always some kind of problem with the dad not being there for the baby. I think these types of shows are bad for the society. They are bad for the society because they make dads, or at least teen dads, look like bad people.

                As soon as I saw that they were making the dads look bad, I tried to avoid the show as much as possible. The reason being that I am a teen dad myself and I act nothing like they make us look on TV. They make the dad look like a mean and aggressive person that doesn’t want to be with the mom or just doesn’t want to be a dad. I became a dad at the age of 18 and I am now going on 20 and I’m still with my girlfriend and our almost 2 year old baby. What these shows do is try to make people believe that, if you have a baby at a young age, you will either leave the mom or just leave both of them and not be there for either one of them. By doing that, it gives females the belief that there is not one guy out there that they can trust and be with for the rest of their life. In my opinion, instead of making the guys look bad, they should do a show called Teen Parents, which shows both of the parents still being together and still being there for their son or daughter and going out of their way to do whatever they can to make their baby live a good and healthy life.