To the Members of the Portfolio Committee,

My name is Jamar Skinner. I am a nineteen year old college freshman who loves sports, music, school and life. To me, learning how to type and put together a book, article, or essay is amazing and very important especially if we the students are looking to find a job as bloggers or if we choose to write a book. Learning how to do it all correctly really comes in handy and makes things smoother. When starting English 101 i  was happy because i have always done good in writing as long as i had something good to write about. I also wanted to learn more about blogs as well as the things we were going to cover in this class. Although i was a little nervous to be writing and learning more with the big dog’s, i still wanted to improve on anything i needed to improve on. I came in this class open minded and ready to do whatever i had to do. The thing i feel i have a lot of issues on is expanding my vocabulary and writing  longer essay’s. I like to read a lot of blogs and professional writings to help me more, because i feel if i keep reading professional writing’s and seeing them i will get use to it and pick up a lot of things that can always help me when I’m writing something. I still could improve on things because it’s always room for improvement even if i was a professional writer. I have never put as much thought into an essay  back in high school as i do now  so i have most definitely grown from a couple of years back.  The three essay’s i have here show a little of what i have learned. I really hope you enjoy, i have stressed and worked so hard just to make sure this portfolio is as close to perfect as possible. They are very interesting essay’s and i’m still a growing student, so for the person reading and grading this portfolio thank you and please enjoy.

My first essay listed is my favorite because it was a personal essay about me. I had a lot of fun writing this one mainly because i got the chance to talk about what I’m interested in. I also had to think way back in time to complete  this whole essay. I chose this essay because it is very interesting  and by far the best one in my eyes. When i first started on it i had a very short version of it and it wasn’t enough. So i had to dig deeper and give more details and examples on what i was writing about. Even though it was about me it really wasn’t that easy at first to come up with five  to six paragraphs. I talk about my curiosity for engineering and mixing in this essay along with how i started doing music and engineering my own vocals and what i hope to learn in the future.

My second submission  was totally about curiosity and the different types of curiosity. I chose this essay because it gives a little more to the reader  because of the topic and work cited pages. I had to find a lot of articles dealing with curiosity so i could get more facts  and backup everything i was stating in the essay. One reason why i like this article is because of the facts you get about the different types of curiosity and how they are expressed in this essay. I had to really focus on this article to make sure i wasn’t talking in circles about curiosity. This essay lets you know how curiosity is  something that is inside of us all and how curiosity makes us go beyond sometimes and ask questions on how curiosity works. I went through so much just to get my work cited page correct along with the whole essay and to fix my corrections.

My last piece submitted was the hardest. I struggled so much with this essay that it’s not even funny. I chose to write about alien abduction, UFO’S  and the illuminati since i knew i could talk about this subject  for days and find facts about it. Turns out, me knowing so much about it effected me and had me in writers block for a while. I was at a stand still with this essay for a long time it was hard for me to start from some where and do it right. In this essay i wrote about secrets the government won’t tell the world about; Along with getting to the bottom of alien abductions and UFO’s. I really wasn’t sure about using this essay until i made my mind up at the last second. I put this in the portfolio because it was done and it’s actually highly interesting. This essay taught me not to write about subjects you know to much about already.

When i think about myself from the beginning of the semester up until now, i know for a fact i have grown and learned a lot more than before. I have learned to spot my mistakes quicker and learn from them as i continue to write. I am also proud of myself because a lot of students didn’t come back to class after break and i feel like maybe they gave up or had other plans. So for me to come to class everyday and learn what the instructor had to teach and do the work is great. I feel like i didn’t waste my time or money and i learned a lot in this class that i can take with me and build from. I plan to make my weakness strong and keep my mistakes very low and keep practicing because that makes perfect.

Growing up as a kid, being curious is a part of us. There are so many questions children have in their head just floating, that’s curiosity. When I was younger I wasn’t thinking about where I may be in a couple of years or college or anything of that nature. (When I got older, that’s when those types of questions came about.) I used to be more into sports before I started hanging out with my cousins who were into music at the time.

They would always talk about music in front of me, but I never really paid them any mind. One day I just dropped in on their conversation when they were talking about doing music, so I said, “Let me write something. Let me do a song with you guys. Now at that time I was just joking around and doing it just because it was fun and I was into it. Before I could blink my eyes, I was writing to instrumentals almost everyday. Now a couple of years, later my big curiosity now is mixing and engineering. I am so obsessed with trying to make my vocals sound perfect or at least somewhat nice. I just want to know how the professional engineers mix and master real artist vocals.

I wonder How do engineers pan vocals. With panning you can drag vocals to the far right, far left, the middle and center or add echoes when panning it lets you put your voice all the way to the left side of the speaker or right which ever you prefer.  Things that I see that keep me curious are YouTube videos, TV shows where people are in a real studio recording and I see vocals on the computer. My curiosity is audio engineering and music. Also wondering how do the professionals do it all. Before I got so caught up into quality and trying to get my sound right, I used to record with really bad quality but at that time to me and  my friends it sounded good; we were happy. How the audio came out was the last thing on our mind at that time; we just wanted to record and hear our words and beats and share it.

So about around 2010- 2011 I had my own microphone, computer and program. Even though I had those things, my quality was still a little bad, but after a while I started saying to myself “I have to fix this as soon as possible because no one will want to ride or listen to this for long.” So while I was in high school I met a few guys and one of them had this software program called “cool edit pro” and at first I was scared to ask him if he could put it on a flash drive for me, but when I asked he said yes with no problem. At that point I was beyond happy so after that I hunted that guy down every day until I got it in my hands because the day the guy said he would give it to me I didn’t end up getting it until a couple days later. When I received that program, I was happy because now I knew I had a program I could keep and also have to learn and figure out.

This was when I started to really get into mixing and clearing my vocals up because I had to and no one else would do it for me. I ended up pretty much just learning on my own on how to mix and master and clean my vocals up better. I also watched YouTube videos to help me out more on questions I had for myself and about the program. When I kept playing around with it, I learned a lot more. For my first vocal’s I used an amplify filter and put in center wave, dynamics processing, reverb, FFT filter, graphic Equalizer, and spit clear. I was switching up my steps as I was growing and doing more music and learning.

The microphone I had was really bad; I was using a computer microphone which I thought was great until I started to notice air was going through the microphone while I was recording. The air sound sounded like static almost, so I knew I couldn’t have that even though at first I didn’t notice it and did a few songs with it.Even when I did notice it I hated it, it started really getting to me but I couldn’t get another microphone any time soon. I took a break for a while before I started to record again because it was no point to me if I knew it would sound bad or not how I wanted it. A couple of months passed and one of my friends let me borrow his microphone until he came back, but he never said when he would come back. He just told me “I know where it’s at and I’ll be back you good.” I was like that’s cool. It turns out the microphone ended up staying there for a couple of months so at that time I was back to recording and I had learned new ways to clear my vocals up and new steps. Now around this time I was happy with my vocals and have done numerous songs and other artist’s songs but every once in a while I would listen to songs on the radio and hear people’s vocals and quality in a car and try to compare my sound with theirs. That’s probably why I kept getting frustrated and more curious. I just kept speculating on how the real engineers mix and master vocals and what are the right things to do, even though there isn’t  one set way to do it and others mix it in different ways, I would just like to know the basics.

My curiosity came from doing it all the time and just wondering to myself if I could learn more, how can I learn more, can I go to school for this,  a whole lot of things. At the end of the day I’m so curious about mix and mastering and what I have been doing right and wrong also how I can improve.

Everybody has some sort of curiosity whether it was when they were younger, or as an adult.  Edmund Burke said it best: “the first  and simplest emotion  which we discover in the human mind is curiosity”(burke). Curiosity can come from anywere and anybody, whenever  a person wants to know how or why someone does something. According to Francois de La Rochefoucauld, “There are various sorts of curiosity; one is from interest, which makes us desire to know that which may be useful to us; and the other, from pride which comes from the wish to know what others are ignorant of”(rochefoucauld).

Since curiosity isn’t new and so common, it would only be right to ask how does curiosity work? To some people this would be a trick question, to others no. That’s even if there is an answer. Curiosity  is something that evolves around us daily. For  example, we may wonder how many people are up in the world at seven a.m. everyday or are tigers a great pet to have in the house. We humans have the tendency to go above and beyond in doing whatever we put our mind to, and it is our curiosity drives us to go so beyond. An example of that would be a man’s car breaking down on the side of the road, but he doesn’t know why. He will work under his hood for hours until he finds the problem. That’s his curiosity driving him to find out what caused his car to break down. He will go beyond to find out.

This is how our mind works when it comes to curiosity. Curiosity can go a long way when it comes to us humans it can drive us to a happier  life and open up possibilities that we could have never seen coming. Curious people are seekers. They not only enjoy new experiences, but mostly look for challenges that will stretch them, whether that involves making new friendships, learning new skills, or pushing themselves to do their best work. Everyone knows or at least  has an idea of what curiosity feels like.

Curiosity is our motivation that drives us,  Curiosity is more than just having an open mind. As e. e. cummings would say, “once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit”(Cummings). I think when curiosity comes within the mind, it’s almost like a baby bee: as bees grow and become free, they start to do and find new things that either they must know, or want to know. That only leads us to ask this question “what is a curious person like”? to me,  Bradford E Beckwith  answered it perfect by saying

Someone who is on a mission. There is a sense of purpose, especially when they’re pursuing whatever it is that they are curious about.They are obsessed, almost. Possessed may be a little bit exaggerated, but they have a sense of purpose in their life and they need to find out why. What’s going on? Why is this happening? And I’m going to find out the solution to that.(Beckwith)

Although there are millions of curious people In the world, Did anyone teach them? My classmate Cal started being curious after his journey visiting the other side of the world as a child, “Without that child piquing my interest and kindling my curiosity in traveling and learning about the world, it is conceivable that I would not be the same person I am today”(Cal). That statement let’s you know what makes a person curious along with letting you know curiosity comes at any age.

My other class mate Jill is into movies as she says “watching a movie is not about the twists and turns of the plot, but instead about the way the film was made. The way the director chooses to shoot a scene”(Tucker). She states her curiosity about movies and what she is interested in like the reviews, actors and etc.

Some things we will never know the facts to, It all comes down to that one question that keeps coming back:why are people so curious about different things?I think we can all agree that curiosity comes in all sort of forms and can be discussed on a lot of different topics. I think its safe to say that, Curiosity works within your mind and drive and wanting to do or learn what ever it is you are interested in.

I know the first thing  people may think or ask their selves  when they see the image  is “what is it that is top secret”? The response to that question  could be true or false.  According to many different articles, things have been stated about secrets the government  have been hiding for decades about the up most shocking things. Such as aliens, controlling our brains, underground tunnels and etc. according to an dailymail  reporter, president JFK was assassinated 10 days after he was shown  highly confidential documents about UFOs. Some people believe that his assassination happened because they didn’t want him to discover facts about UFOs.

Therefore if  they were trying to hide things  about UFO’s then, what makes you think they aren’t now? Turns out, there have been stories from people all over the world about being abducted or seeing UFO’s. There was an lady from South Ashburnham, Massachusetts named Betty Andreasson  that had been visited by aliens on January 25 1967. She had stated that she was in her kitchen, with her father and seven kids in the living room  until she notice a red light coming from her window then suddenly her lights went off. Her father ran to the kitchen to see what the deal was about the red light, while betty went to secure her children. Her father was the first to lay eyes on the beings, he said “he thought they were children in Halloween costumes” (betty andreasson) The weirdest thing about it is betty said “I had a peaceful feeling when they were inside the house”.

Stories and footage have been sent to scientist that can actually put pieces together about UFO’s and alien abduction.  Someone sent an anonymous  video of an alien abduction to the T.V. show “Paranormal Borderline”. The video shows a man walking outside around eleven pm at night, it was all caught on the store camera. The  camera caught a light shining for a couple seconds then things went black, but two hours later the man reappeared in the same spot, threw up and walked away slowly going  left and right.

The people intending to rule in these six areas. Religious, Political, Economic, Educational, Military and Social  go by as the “Illuminati”, for those who don’t recognize this name at all, the illuminati is people claiming to possess special enlightenment or knowledge of something. “some mysterious standard known only to  the illuminati of the organization”.  These people are the reason things happen that you mite not even know of or have an explanation for in this world.  The illuminati plan is to take over! So far they have ruled and took over all six  areas with years and years of planning on how to takeover and be “gods”. The things the government may know has been on the “hush hush” to keep hidden from the public.

There has been speculation back in 2010 about the white house adding a “new west wing bunker”. the construction workers put up tall fences so the public couldn’t see what was going on. The workers told everyone that the white house needed an “utility upgrade” but to the people and news reporters that didn’t add up because they were nowhere near the white house working. The news reporters assumed the construction workers were laying another layer to the white as a tunnel instead of it being utility problems.

Turns out  the white house has been constructed on before back in the 1950’s under the Truman administration. Back then they made it sound a little better than what they do now. Before they made it sound like they were building a safety house to protect the president. They ended up calling it the “Secret metro tunnel” it is connected to every room in the white house along with having a secret train that goes to Maryland,Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

So to answer the question about secret tunnels, Yes there could be secret tunnels around.

Work Cited:

Booth, Billy “1967-The Betty Andreasson Abduction” http://ufos.about.com/ the betty andreasson.  5 April. 2014. Web. April 5 2014.

Estep, Eliot “The Shocking Truth About Alien Abductions” http://www.collective-evolution.com. The Shocking Truth About Alien Abductions 4 Nov.2013. Web.April 4 2014.

“Was JFK Killed Because of his Interest in Aliens? Secret Memo Shows President Demanded UFO Files 10 Days before Death.” Mail Online   19 Apr. 2011.Web. April 4 2014.

“White House Construction: The New West Wing Bunker” Whitehouse. Gov 19 April 2010. Web. April 4 2014.