Assignment 1

Hi! I'm Monique. I am a commuter from Jersey City, which, if you take the train like I do, is about a 30 minute ride away. I'm 20 years old, I love to read (mostly titles from the YA or Young Adult category). At the moment, I am not a FCST major. Though I plan on teaching, most likely early childhood education. Teaching has always been a passion of mine, ever since I was younger, so I am excited to pursue that. I am totally shy and I don't speak up much, and you might wonder why in the world I would choose something like teaching, but it's something I love and I don't want my shyness to get in the way of that!

At home, I live with both my mom and my dad, and my younger brother, who is 15. As a family, we get along pretty well. My parents have been together 22 years this past March. Sadly, they're the type of parents that you just have to roll your eyes at or leave the room because they won't stop with the lovey eyes and random hugs. It does get annoying sometimes, I have to admit! But they do have their arguments, because what married couple doesn't? But at the end of the day, like my mother says, "No one ever goes to bed angry."

My brother and I are also really close, and we spend most of our time together watching movies and TV shows on Netflix. We have tons of useless insiders and jokes that no one will ever understand. While we do not have any pets, my brother had a teddy-bear hamster named "Pepsi" that died a while ago. And just for a laugh, he had another hamster before Pepsi, but it escaped from it's cage (when no one was home) and to this day we have no clue where it went!

From the syllabus, I find both the topics "Race, Ethnicity, & Families" and "Effects of Divorce on Children" interesting. I chose the first one because my parents are both from Trinidad (an island in the West Indies near the Caribbean!) and it would be interesting to see the effects studies say a different culture or ethnicity may or may not have on a marriage. Also, I chose the second topic, because I have two close cousins whose parents went through a really nasty divorce several years ago. It bordered on what we were talking about in class, about parents staying together just for the kids, and it just ended horrible and everyone was upset. It would be interesting to study the effects of this and how it would have been different if those parents would have made divorce an option before things got really bad.

As for Wiki, I think I like it! Everything all in one spot, no messy folders to go through, and it's not confusing. I spend a lot of time online too, so I'm sure I'll get everything in no time :)