At the last minute I was named Andrea, after my great grandfather, Andres. I was originally supposed to be named Erica, but my mother decided to name me Andrea after she realized that my great grandfather and I shared the same birthday. Marie, my middle name, was given to me by both my parents. Every girl on my father’s side has the name “Marie”, somewhere in their name.

On April 20, 1993, my parents were in the hospital but the doctor was nowhere to be found. My mother told me that the nurse was telling her not to push and to hold tight for a few more minutes until the doctor was found, so my father began yelling at the nurse and banging on all the windows frantically looking for the doctor.  I am the middle child; I have one older brother, one step sister, and one half sister. My brother, Vance is 17 years old, lives in Oxnard with me and is a senior at Oxnard High School. My two sisters, Reiley, nine years old, and Karlie, 1 year and 7 months, live in Ojai with my step mom and my dad. I have a pretty big family and schedule, according to the fact that I live with my mom and my step dad on the weekdays and on the weekends, me and my brother visit my dad and my step mom. I’m pretty close to my grandparents from my mom’s side and my step mom’s side. My father’s mom lives in Texas and my step father’s parents live in Mexico, so I never really get to see them much.

Right before I turned two, I had developed a rare blood disease called I.T.P (Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura). The hospital had me take different kinds of medicine because they didn’t know the cure. I was getting two shots a day, I had to be taking steroids and other medicines but eventually they just took out my spleen. That ended up being the cure and since then, I have never received any notification of the disease coming back. The disease ended right after my 5^th birthday. My family doesn’t really have any special traditions except for getting together for the holidays. My favorite “family” memory is when my mom, my brother, my aunt, my uncle, my step dad, and I all took a camping trip to Catalina for a few days.

I was born in the Ventura hospital but raised in Oxnard for 15 years now. My parents wanted to move to a different city last year but ended up buying another house in Oxnard. If I were to move anywhere, it would have to be either Long Beach or Ventura. Long Beach, because my aunt and uncle live there and I always have a great time with my friends staying at their house. Ventura, because I think I would like walking to different places because there’s always something in Ventura that’s “worth walking to”. My mother’s dream is to move to a small town country side city, where everyone knows everyone and such on. My brother, my step dad and I all agreed that we would never move to the country side as long my brother and I live there with them.  

As a freshman, my experience at Oxnard has been really good. I’ve made a lot new friends, tried new things, and learned a lot of new information. At Oxnard High School, there are a lot of fun activities and things to do. The lunch “dance offs”, the rallys, and the times we get to spend with our friends really makes our school a fun place. Some things I dislike about school are that the schools’ bathrooms are never open and the food is not that great. I am on the swim team here at Oxnard High School. It was my first year swimming and I really enjoyed it.

My favorite subject would have to be English. I enjoy reading and I’m pretty good at spelling so it makes English easy for me. I also enjoyed all the presentations and “Acts” we did as a group. The subject I like the least would have to be Health. The teacher is really uptight and strict. I haven’t really gotten any awards since like 6^th grade for anything I’ve done. From 1^st grade to 6^th grade I always got the “A.R. points” award or an award involving grades.

When I graduate from High School, I want to immediately start taking classes at Ventura College for one year, and then transfer to Cal Arts. I want to go to Cal Arts because their photography program is really good and I’ve heard great things from other people about that school. Cal Arts is located in Valencia which is not that far, but I would be rented out a dorm somewhere nearby. If Cal Arts doesn’t fall through, then Otis, in Long Beach is my other option. My aunt and uncle live in Long Beach so I could also rent out a room from them.