Shirley Cruz
English Composition 1
9/12/2013
When I was a little girl I was always stimulated by the arts. I loved science, I loved history, but nothing struck a nerve with me like art always has. By art I mean poetry, fine art, acting, music etc. I wanted to be something new every single day, but it always had to do with art. The first career that made the most sense to me was a painter. When I was very young (probably about six or seven) I told everyone that when I grew up I was going to be a famous painter. When I was a child I didn’t know that only the lucky became famous. Life seemed a lot simpler to me at that tender age. I thought you chose something you loved and did it wholeheartedly. To me this all you needed to do to be happy. As I grew older my prospective careers became a bit more complex. Painter became interior decorator, interior decorator became architect, architect became actress and the list goes on. I’ve wanted to do almost everything in the field of art except singing, only because I can’t sing for my life. Math and science are both very important in everyday life and affect people in many different ways. But they do not have the effect on people that art does. Art touches you on a much deeper level than anything else can. Music, art, acting, poetry speaks to the soul. I guess I recognized this ever since I was a child. I wanted to do the same. I wanted to affect the way people viewed things. I wanted my work to have a lasting impression on whoever saw it. I wanted my work to stay with them. I wanted people to feel what I had always felt. Unfortunately, I come from a family of “serious” scholars. My father was an accountant, I have cousins who work on Wall Street, and most of the other members of my family have never even attended college. Despite their lack of education those members of my family still all agree that one cannot have a serious career in the arts. When I was very small my mother didn’t make a big deal of my artistic aspirations and even when I was in my adolescent years she didn’t pay much mind to them, until I got to high school. Before entering high school I got accepted to the Visual and Performing Arts High School Program, I got accepted to the acting section of the program. I was completely thrilled and it was during this time that I began to see the worry that my mother began to have in my choices. She would always say things like “It’s good that you have hobbies, that’s all this is right, a hobby?” At a parent-teacher conference my sophomore year I recall my mother telling my chemistry teacher that I wanted to be an actress, what I remember more vividly is their reaction. Both women broke out in ferocious laughter that made my heart sink. I was furious at my mother. But for some odd reason I understood why she laughed and this instilled doubt in me, something that I hadn’t felt about acting before. My anger didn’t only stem from this one account, my mother has always done things that infuriated me. We haven’t ever really understood each other. It was around this time that along with acting I began to write a lot more than I had in the past. I’ve always loved to write, but around the age of fifteen I began to use it as an outlet. I demonstrated my enthusiasm in this new talent that I had