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On September 15, 2004, I was born in San Bruno California. My parents are Noel and Veronica Padilla. I grew up in San Bruno and San Mateo because a little while after I was born my parents divorced. So, I grew up with my parents having shared custody of me between both cities. Growing up in San Bruno all my life demonstrates navigational capital because after living here all my life I am able to navigate through the city without assistance. I remember where to go everywhere almost completely by heart and if someone needed me to tell them where to go, I could tell them were.

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Growing up with divorced parents to being 18 years old now has not been the easiest. Between all the arguments that were had and the petty actions that were made. This has made me see life in a different light. It has taught me to not hold on to grudges and to let things go. Sometimes if you hold on to those negative things it can negetivley affect those around you and yourself. It can hurt your happiness. According to John H. Harvey if we "can learn from this pain, we are making progress"(2). Harvey mentioning about learning "from this pain" indicates that experiences like these bring more room for growth in life. These experiences give you the chance to learn from your parent's mistakes.

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Growing up I was always a kid that was on the bigger side and in school I tended to get bullied often for it. These events lasted throughout elementary, middle, and slowed down in high school. The bullying throughout school brought me to very low points in my life to the point where I started to believe the things people were telling me. As I got older, I started to question who these people are to tell me who I am and why have I not stood up for myself yet. I started to learn that I needed to stand up for myself and needed to defend my dignity. As soon as I started doing that the bullying gradually stopped.

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I played sports throughout my life and a big sport that played an important role for me in high school was football. This sport was a staple to my life and schedule throughout high school. I tailored everything during my life around this sport and everything I did was tailored to my goal to helping me play college football. Around my senior year of high school things started to change. At this time, I had recovered from a torn ACL. During practice one day during my senior year I had torn my meniscus. I was dedicated to coming back to play after my meniscus surgery. After 4 weeks I came back to play and I realized I didn't enjoy the sport like I used to. I realized if I stayed and remained playing I would be wasting my time and everyone else's time so I decided it was time to stop playing. Everyone was opposed to this idea and told me to stick around, but I was convinced that this was the right move for me. I did not feel my coaches had my back and I did not feel they really cared about my well-being. It felt as iof they only seen me as another number. I wanted to explore new passions.

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After I had quit football I new I wanted to try to explore some new hobbies and maybe find some new passions. Throughout high school I had always lifted weights for sports and I always enjoyed that. I decided to capitalize on that enjoyment and start consistently lifting in powerbuilding style training. This has brought me lots of enjoyment and has shaped my body and my mind. It has taught me a lot about the importance of the journey in life. I also picked up acting as a possible future career. I recently enrolled in acting classes and I have been taking these classes for the past 5 weeks. These classes have taught me a lot and I hope to make a break through soon to be able to act on film and television.

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With my acting classes I am taking I hope to learn a lot and hope to become a successful actor in major films and television one day. Right now, that I have been acting so far, I have been enjoying it, but I don't know if I can say it is my passion yet. I think I am in the stage of learning and loving it. From acting I want to become financially free and have a job that is fun. Having a fun an enjoyable job has always been important to me growing up and this is a future that I could see myself enjoying.

My dreams of breaking into the acting industry relates to aspirational capital because I am able to maintain these hopes and dreams despite the doubts that people have about me. I am getting closer to wanting to do this professionally and it us becoming an aspiration of mine.

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Financial freedom and literacy is a very important thing to me. I want to have plenty of money to where money is no longer a worry for me. Growing up I can say I never really had to worry about money, but sometimes I noticed that my parents did. Seeing them sometimes worry a bit caused a feeling of unease sometimes and uncertainty in my life. This made me not want to have to be in that same situation in the future. I want to learn to be smart and manage the abundance of wealth I see myself having in order to maintain stability. According to Carmela Apprea in the International Handbook of Financial Literacy she says the importance is "not just for professional in the sector of investment and banking, but for every every person possible managing their financial affairs in everyday life"(1). Carmela talking about managing "financial affairs" highlights the importance of being financially responsible with certain decisions and taking control of your money flow.

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Being a catholic has played in important role in my life growing up. I grew up going to church, praying often, and practicing catholic traditions. As I grew a little older I noticed myself straying away from these traditions. These past few years I have been coming back to them and have been doing my best to live life close to God's vision. Although I am not perfect I beleive that it is the thought and intention that counts. To me it's about the idea of being a good human being that is important. Being closer to god also makes me feel like my dreams are more acheivable

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Harvey, John H., and Mark A. Fine. Children of Divorce: Stories of Loss and Growth. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2010, doi:10.4324/9780203848913.

Aprea, Carmela., et al., editors. International Handbook of Financial Literacy. 1st ed. 2016., Springer Singapore, 2016, doi:10.1007/978-981-10-0360-8.

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1st College 1 Topic: Mindfulness moments

This topic was not a designated class lesson, but it was something we did before each class. In our mindfulness moments we would clear our minds and allow ourselves to relax for a moment so that we could be better at retaining our information.

Learning how to have mindfulness moments has helped me this semester because I have utilized the techniques that my professor has taught me to allow myself to be more focused and productive when doing work at home.

Advice that I would give to an incoming student regarding this topic would be to learn how to center yourself and prepare your mind to be productive. Doing this through mindfulness moments allows you to finish your assignments quicker and to be less stressed when completing them.

2nd College 1 Topic: Microaggressions

This topic was about identifying small racist behavior that could be easily overlooked as not racist. In the lesson we went over examples and how to recognize it. We also went over specific scenarios and identified microaggressions in the scenarios.

Learning about this topic has helped me identify any microaggressions that have been done against me in the past and it gave me the tools to recognize it if I see it in real life.

Advice that I would give to incoming students regarding this topic would be to learn how to properly identify microaggressions. To best connect to the topic, I would also recommend that you try to look back on your life to see if you have been affected by microaggressions or look back to see if anyone you know has been affected by this.

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An "ah ha" moment that I had this semester was when in class we worked on our goal setting. This was an "ah ha" moment for me because establishing my short-term goals and my long-term goals inside and outside of college allowed me to plan out how to achieve these goals and lay out a clear path for myself. I kind of already had my goals in mind before this topic in class, but allowing myself to go over these goals again allowed me to reevaluate them and solidify stronger plans that will assist me in achieving them.

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My current academic goal is to get a bachelor's degree in film and media because it is a general degree that has a lot of career flexibility. I also think that career can assist me in my passion for acting. This career also has lots of components that are interesting to me.

Based on my goal from the beginning of the semester nothing has shifted yet and my path still seems to be going towards a career in acting.

The progress towards this bachelor's degree that I have made is that I have made a few short films with my friends that were very fun to make. I also learned about the art of video editing and filming projects. Outside of school I also have an audition for acting with an agent from Los Angeles.

I would say I definitely underestimated the difficulty of my first semester of college. This semester was more difficult than I had hoped, but thankfully I had adapted, and I have finished with straight A's this semester.