Writing Frenzy!!!

Those of you that know me outside of the blogosphere know that I love to write.  I have loved writing ever since I was a child, and lately I've been in a bit of a writing frenzy. Over the last 3 years I have actively attempted to participate in National Novel Writing Month. It's known to writers as NaNoWriMo, or NaNo for short. I've never finished any of my novels.  To prepare myself, in the month of October, I've been on a writing frenzy for this little gem:

A Chance At Paradise is the prequel to my new series, called "God's Spotlight" Each novel will deal with a different girl facing a crisis between her life and faith, often dealing with complications from love, glory and fame.

The prequel to the God's Spotlight Series follows Daviana Sales, a senior at East Los High in Los Angeles. 

Seventeen year old Daviana has the life every girl wants. Pretty and popular, Daviana is the new captain of the varsity cheerleaders, has some of the best grades in school and is on track to score the lead in the school play. 

Daviana has her eye on star quarterback Xavier Delgado, determined to make him her leading man. Before she can be with him, the shocking truth comes out. Xavier has a reputation for sleeping with the prettiest girls in school.

When Daviana auditions for A Chance at Paradise, the school play, she finds a new love, the theater.  She also becomes smitten with the play's writer, quiet, modest and God fearing soccer star Teodoro Reyes. But Teodoro and Daviana come from two different worlds... Everything flips on its head when Daviana is cast as the lead in A Chance At Paradise, and Xavier wins the male lead role. Just when all is going well,  Xavier must deal with a crisis, and Daviana has to convince Teodoro that it is time to step out of the shadows, and into the spotlight.

 Daviana will go on to make an appearance in my NaNoWriMo novel  On The Edge of Paradise, coming in November. I'll post more about that novel as it gets closer. Both novels have some compromising material, but they also embody the struggles faced by those who follow (as well as those who have fallen away from) the Christian Faith. 

I no longer trust completely online schools. Here's Why.

Wow, it has been forever since I posted on this blog. But I feel like I just need to vent a little bit.

I have always been a big advocate for education. Those of you who know me know that I was once a major in Education, and decided to leave it because I felt like I would not have a future as an educator in my state. The funny thing is I keep finding ways to go back into the field, whether it is providing a friend with free tutoring or working with a nonprofit education program as an interpreter.

The former part of that journey has been bothering me lately.  A few years ago I befriended a young woman online, who I will not name in this blog for the sake of her privacy. She is about 5-6 years older than me and suffers from an unknown combination of learning disabilities, one of which is ADHD. When I met her, she was unemployed, and spent most of her time travelling between her parents home and the home of a family friend. She split time between both homes and babysat for her friends' young children. She also was always on social media.

In 2011, she expressed to me that she wanted to work as a childcare provder and has dreams of  opening her own daycare. I encouraged her to seek out programs in her hometown, perhaps at a local community college. I also told her that I would support her as much as was humanly possible.

Aside from me and a cousin who is more like a sister to her, she has had quite a lack of support for the decision. Her mother wants to kick her out of their home, and while she wants her daughter to get a job, she has never supported her choice to go back to school.

Against my advice, my friend enrolled in an Associates program in Psychology at Argosy University online. She has never registered with the school as having any kind of disability either, despite my pleas to do so in order for her to get more assistance. This is due to the fact that she believes she will be treated with kid gloves if she does so. Until this year, she believed she was obtaining an Associates in the Childcare field, because she thought Psychology and Childcare were the same degree.

Argosy is the worst possible decision my friend ever made.  The syllabi provided for her courses do not give due dates for assignments so she cannot organize herself accordingly. She also relies on me to "rephrase" her work for her so that the writing matches college level, as she makes frequent spelling and grammar mistakes. Despite my efforts to teach her, she is still unable to properly cite sources for her papers so I edit those too.  I do all this for her online since I live in NC and she lives in PA.

Somehow, even when I back off of helping her, she still passes her courses.  I have expressed concerns and even gone so far as to contact the school's online chat to see who she needs to contact since she seems to be reluctant to do it herself for fear of looking stupid.
I am at a point where I am ready to stop helping her, but am not sure how to explain to her my reasons.

Moral of the story: Unless you are in a Master's or Doctoral program or are highly motivated, do NOT look at online schools. If you must, check reviews of the school, good and bad. If you have a disability, make sure it is documented with the university you attend before you begin classes. If you do not know how, ask. Stand up for yourself. Because in college, no one else will.

God's Not Dead. . .

This is a repost from the Spanish version of my blog. The majority of the following post has been re-worded from Spanish.

Hello all:
I know that it has been quite some time since I posted on this blog account. My reasons for not doing so are mostly school related as I am nearing the end of my undergraduate studies. Lord willing, in another semester, I will be graduating with a degree in Spanish. It has taken me a long time to get here, and it has been nothing short of a journey.

In 2008, I entered North Carolina Central University pursuing a degree in Education. At the time I had a passion for teaching English as a Second Language to Hispanic children of elementary school age. Nearly two years later, I was burned out and ready to give up on college. My classes were difficult and my passion for the education system had been trampled on by the amount of things I had seen in the field and heard from my professors.

One fall day in 2010, I had a phone conversation with my father, a pastor, and vented my frustration to him. His answer was simple: I should change my major to Spanish, something I had always been good at. I left that conversation still unsure, and immediately prayed when I hung up the phone. The prayer was a simple one: Lord, if this isn't where You want me, show me.

I was running late as usual for a 10 am class. I knew my professor would understand, so I headed out, hoping that I could arrive 10-20 minutes late.

I never made it to either of my two classes that day.  While en route, I had to cross in a place I didn't normally with no signal to do so and no sidewalk, so I did what I had done every day before for  more than a year without incident; I moved to the far edge of the street and coasted on. I never saw the truck that hit my chair in the back until I was lying in the road. To this day I still don't know if the driver saw me before getting out of his truck or not. I ended up in the ER, sore and unharmed, but subjected to numerous tests before finally being released late that afternoon.  Still I stayed in Education, until I became fed up about a year ago and decided to only pursue Spanish.  Over that time, I've been challenged, but my desire to help the Latino community has never changed. Nor has my belief that God guided me through all of this for His perfect will to be accomplished in my life.

Recently, my mother and I went to go see the Christian film God's Not Dead. I won't take the time to review the film here as I've done so on other blogs. If you want to see my review, you can visit the post on my WordPress account here. I do highly recommend that you see the film for yourselves. It challenged the way I view my faith.

Now, in 2014, I am one final semester away from obtaining my degree. This just proves to me that God is good and has a plan for me that He wants to see through!!!

Stress

Living with purpose means that sometimes you will be stressed out. Case in point: Me right now. The key is learning that stress is temporary, but it's important.

Living with Purpose by living the Golden Rule

 

Pictured above is Ms. Amber Patrice Riley, known best for her role as Mercedes Jones on the Fox musical comedy show Glee. She's also a current contestant on season 17 of Dancing With the Stars and one of my favorite actresses, who I'm using to make a point today. Part of living with a purpose is learning to accept those you don't know for who they are, instead of being critical of them. Anyone who has watched Dancing with the Stars knows that they are known for shocking upsets and one such upset occurred last night when R&B singer Christina Milian was voted in the bottom 2 and eliminated from the show.

The elimination sparked outcry and hateful comments from many fans, quite a few making biased comments against the "fat black lady" (Amber), saying she was a "horrible dancer" and only stayed because there is a huge bias in the eyes of the judges in favor of her pro partner, 4 time  DWTS champ Derek Hough.  What shocks me is the negative comments made against her because of her race and weight, with one Huffington Post user calling her a "pant load". Which brings me to my point.

As I strive to live with purpose I see that so many people in today's world have forgotten what it means to be kind, even to those you don't know. As a plus sized young woman just a little younger than Amber (I'm 23, she's 27) I wonder why people would stoop to calling her fat and a pant load and how they would feel if the same names were directed at them. I was always taught to accept people for who they are. I also wonder what kind of values this teaches young men and women today. Are we going to tell them it's okay to call a person a "pant load" just because they are larger than the size two ideal that magazine covers and models paint for us or are we going to live by the value of treating each other as we want to be  treated.

How do you think we should teach future generations to view others who may be of a different size, race, etc, than them? Comment below!

So many things going on....

.... that I keep forgetting to update this blog. Wow. Well, there's lots of random new things going on with me. . .

• Going on a family vacay for the 4th. I can't wait because we're hitting up our favorite place in the whole world: Charleston, South Carolina!!!!
• I've officially decided to do NaNoWriMo! For those who don't know, NaNoWriMo stands for "National Novel Writing Month" and begins in November. I'm hoping that doing it will cause me to at least finish one of the novel ideas swimming in my head, but we shall see.
• Hopefully will be taking more classes in my major this fall, putting me one step closer to graduation.

Wow, that may not seem like a lot to some people but it is to me. Also hoping to get back in my music writing groove soon, but we'll see how it goes. Lord willing, I'll be fine and I can just get back to it whenever. Ciao, bloggersphere!!!

Changes

For those who don't know,  I am an artist as well as a student. I've been writing my own Christian Hip Hop  and Christian spoken word pieces since the age of 15. As a female emcee I've had to deal with people thinking I couldn't do anything lyrically. It's difficult out here for any emcee. For me, it's especially hard because I'm not typical. I don't flow like most emcees and there are times when I feel like I'm seeing ahead of my time. And I mean way ahead. I'm only 22 so I feel like I'm kinda a baby compared to everyone else.  But there's one thing I keep hearing lately.  "It's time for a revolution". It's strange. I've always felt like an outcast, but I guess that's because I've never been a secular rapper. Lately I've been praying,  God, show me what to do. You give me the rhymes. You show 'em it's You, not me. I'm just a mouthpiece.

I'm a general. I know that. I've known that since I had visions of spiritual warfare when I started this. But I'm rambling.  .  . I think it's time that we change things. WE need a revolution. I'm not talking overthrowing the physical government. I'm seeing in the spirit realm. It's time for the army to raise up. My generation has so many sleeping warriors who don't even know who or what they are.  There are two definitions of the world revolution that apply  here.

If you look up the word "revolution" in Merriam Webster's dictionary, you will find that the second definition has many subsets. The core definition is: a sudden, radical, or complete change. Then come the subsets:
b.: a fundamental change in political organization; especially: the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed  and : a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something : a change of paradigm. It's time for the spiritual paradigm to change, or as my good friend Dr. N. Cindy Trimm might say,"We need a paradigm shift."  Now I'm left to think on how we go about it. (This is where my book comes in, I think!)