Genuinely Giancarlo

In less than twelve hours, I will have begun the final year of my high school experience. And I could not be more excited. I can't wait for all the football games. All the dances. All the funny experiences and wonderful memories. I can't wait for the new friends I'll make, and all the old ones I'll get closer with. I can't wait to go door-to-door in December, sacrificing my worthless sleep for the people that need my aid so much. I can't wait for the assemblies. I can't wait for the basketball games, defending our championship and getting so pumped in the process. And the best part? There are so many exciting things that I have not even thought about yet. Things that I don't even know are going to happen. In a way, all this excitement kind of freaks me out. But what really freaks me out? I never thought that my path would go this way. If you had asked me five years ago, I never could have guessed that I would be where I am now at this moment. I n...

I can't believe it's been a year. As I woke up on August 2, 2015, I became informed that one of my classmates, Stephany Villegas, had died the night before in a car accident . I felt confused, sympathetic, and deeply saddened by the news. It was kind of hard for me to process what had happened. "How could she just be... gone?" was the question I kept asking myself. This girl that I sat behind in my Spanish class was dead, and I would never see her again. In my life, I haven't had too many direct experiences with death. I mean, all four of my grandparents have passed away and I have known a few other people in my life that have died, but I consider myself very much spared from a lot of the pain that death brings. And so Stephany's passing was hard. It came out of nowhere and I didn't really understand how it had happened or how to react to it. But what made it harder was the fact that she was so close to me in age. One of the things that made my p...