I learned to read using this program that used VHS tapes, board games, and card games to teach basic spelling and sentence structure. This program turned learning to read into a game that I always wanted to play. The program utilized VHS tapes, board games, and card games to be as interactive as possible.
My mom bought me a paperback copy of Harry Potter when I was in kindergarten. It was the first novel I ever read and inspired within me a strong love of reading. After reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, I continued to read the series and sought out more books about young heroes and their adventures.
In addition to Hooked on Phonics and what I was learning in school, I improved my reading skills by playing computer games. These games were CD-Roms for my family's PC that used games and puzzles to improve vocabulary, understanding of sentence structure, and grammar.
In sixth grade I started a biweekly newspaper for Mr. Hazard's homeroom class. It was normally four to five pages long, and featured articles written by my classmates. The Hazard Headlines, made using newsletter templates on Apple's Pages program, was my first experience in publishing and writing for an audience.
For my twelfth birthday, a friend gave me a hardcover journal with Jack Skellington on the cover. I wrote in it in black or blue ink every week. Since then I have filled over a thousand pages in handwritten journals. Journaling is an essential part of my life. Writing just to write is therapeutic and has dramatically improved my writing skills.
At the end of eighth grade my English class was assigned a project to write a story for a third grade student at my school featuring the student as the protagonist. I wrote the document using Word on my Apple desktop. At about sixteen pages single-spaced, this was the longest short story I have ever written and shared. This project showed me that I could complete longer writing projects, as well as how exciting it is to write a story and share it with someone
At the end of my freshman year of high school, I wrote and directed "Doodle," my first short movie through my high school's video production program. I wrote the script using Celtx software. The project was shot on a Sony camera and edited on Final Cut Pro 7. "Doodle" was the first time I ever wrote a script and got to utilize professional equipment and a crew to make a movie. The writing and directing process was challenging and rewarding, and fueled my commitment to video production throughout the rest of high school.
"Reflections" is my high school's annually published literary magazine. My freshman English teacher convinced me to submit a piece of writing to be published. I wrote my submission as a word document and sent it to the publication's Gmail account. This was the first time my writing was a part of a larger publication.
Poetry Out Loud is an annual nation-wide poetry recitation competition. Competitors choose poems from an online database and memorize them for recitation at their school's competitions. I recited at my high school's competition sophomore through senior year. Poetry Out Loud made me excited about poetry and recitation, and encouraged me to seek it out outside of my high school.
"Ursula" was my most involved video production project of my sophomore year. It is a short surrealist movie about a girl whose teddy bear takes over her identity. Like "Doodle," it was written on Celtx and shot on Sony cameras, but it was edited on Final Cut X. "Ursula" was my first video project that had a distinct style to it, which I applied and developed throughout the rest of my high school video projects.
The summer before my junior year I interned at Tone It Up!, a company that promotes women's health and fitness through food and workout programs. During my internship I managed Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, and blogs on the company website. This internship taught me about how to utilize the intersection between social media and business.
At the end of my junior year I made a documentary-style personal essay for my video production class, which screened at the South Bay Student Video Festival. For this project I did not write a script on Celtx, but compiled a GoogleDoc of excerpts from my journal entries to use as voiceover. The footage mostly consisted of home movie footage that I had shot over the course of middle and high school, clips from previous video projects, and my art. I mixed the sound using my electric guitar and GarageBand, and edited the project on Final Cut X. This project utilized almost every form of media available to me. It was my most personal video production project and reached the widest audience.
The summer before my senior year I started a personal blog on Google's Blogger. "Alex in Wonderland" is a site for me to post my poems, art, video projects, short stories, and ideas.
The fall of my senior year, I applied to eleven colleges. Each application required multiple supplemental essays to be submitted through online application portals. The essays had to convey personality, intelligence, involvement, and experience. These essays were a significant factor in my application process and therefore my path to New York University.
In my senior year, I was a co editor-in-chief for "Reflections." After submitting work every year of high school and helping with the editing process my junior year, I was familiar with the process of selecting works to be published. However, I had to learn how to use the program InDesign for publishing. We used Gmail for submissions, Photoshop for photography editing, and InDesign to compile the document. The process was very time-consuming, but seeing the final product published was very rewarding. At about one hundred pages, it was the largest publication I had ever edited.
In the second half of my senior year I started writing more poetry in my free time. After Poetry Out Loud I looked for more places to be involved in poetry. Coffee Cartel is a coffee shop near my home in California. They host a poetry open mic every Tuesday. People bring their poetry either handwritten, printed out, or memorized to share with the group of about thirty to forty people. My best friend and I went to these weekly events and recited our own work. In-House Arts was an open mic program started by my classmates that was open to musicians and poets. They met once a month at a member's house on a Saturday night. I recited original poetry there as well. Through these events, poetry became a way for my to both share my ideas and connect with people who loved poetry as well.
My final video production project in high school was a documentary about my group of friends and how their creative ways of thinking affect the way they interact and relate to each other. I interviewed six of my friends with questions I had written down on a notepad. The project featured some of the poetry and scripts that my friends had written in the form of voiceovers and appearances in the footage. It was also accompanied by a Storehouse blog related to the project, with text, pictures, and video clips. This was one of my favorite projects because I got to showcase my friends' artistic endeavors in the light of our friendship.
We'd love to hear from you. Please send questions or feedback to the below email addresses.
Before contacting us, you may wish to visit our FAQs page which has lots of useful info on Tiki-Toki.
We can be contacted by email at: hello@tiki-toki.com.
You can also follow us on twitter at twitter.com/tiki_toki.
If you are having any problems with Tiki-Toki, please contact us as at: help@tiki-toki.com
Close