Legacies

------This was originally from my xanga, and I posted it in the beginning of the year (January 17th to be exact!) and looking back on it makes me wonder what else God has in store for me My Pseudo-Legacy *I wrote this Reflective Legacy Essay for my AVID class, inevitably, the class wrote it for me. You'll get it once you read it. The number Five. The number of months I have until I graduate, as well as the number of days I spend each week at this place I call high school. The glorified days of high school has been in so many movies, so many pictures, and yet when I sit down and contemplate what my high school days have been like, not a vivid inclination of a memory comes across my mind. Yes, I remember the funny moments, the moments where I’ve laughed and certainly the moments where I’ve cried, but I can’t remember the moment I knew I was doing good, that I was leaving a legacy for my fellow underclassmen to follow through. I’m sure I didn’t leave a legacy behind, but I’ll leave an impression, a skid mark on the sidewalk of these high school turf walls. If you ask what my peers have thought about me, the commonly dreaded, but overall way to sum up what Kathy Reyes is, I’m that typical asian girl. It’s almost too bland a statement to make, but to be truthfully honest to myself; it is what the majority has seen me. In a way, I do live up to that stereotype, but in a way, I’m way more multi-faceted than that. I’m a loyal-friend with the heart and soul of a dancer. I’m the easygoing girl usually in the front of the classroom giving grins to whoever makes eye contact with me. I’m that girl that you meet, but the second I’m not in your line of vision, you forget who I am. It’s true. I am also the girl with an insane amount of cousins, whom all I consider close. Although these are the other personas of me, the one that most only see is I’m that typical asian girl. The number of months I have to change this legacy of mine is Five. Five months to peel away the negative connotations of what I look like. Five months to revamp what I’ve been labeled, and make myself my own Dymo labeler. Five months to reinvent myself, or add to what I’ve already been perceived as. Five months to make a name for myself in this high school, to leave a permanent skid mark on the sidewalk of high school society. In reality, I don’t think my legacy will be as strong as others. I’m not the extrovert that puts herself out there for people to criticize and judge, but atleast I’ll leave something that should be worth remembering right? I want to be remembered as someone that everyone has learned something new from, whether it is a random factoid, or a huge philosophy that rearranged the way someone perceives the world. I want to be that agent of change. I also want to be the person that everyone has had a laugh with. It could have been one of those obnoxious laughs, or a little giggle; it really doesn’t matter, as long as I’ve made you laugh, it’s all that matters to me. Leaving high school is a major stepping stone in my life, but now I’m almost at the end of my rope. At the beginning of this excerpt, I didn’t know my legacy, I knew my image, that I had confused myself with my legacy, but now I really do know. I’m leaving my high school as an AVID kid. The type of individual that sacrifices a class period of doing something easy, and trading it for something that requires me to write notes in Cornell form, and take tutorials that I often took for granted, and have notebook checks in a periodical fashion. I’m leaving high school and taking a part of my very own AVID family with me. As unimaginative as it sounds, it is what I’ve become. I haven’t committed myself to something that was as rewarding as the AVID program in my high school, and I’m proud to leave my legacy as that; an AVID kid. --Sincerely, Kathy