Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

Who am I? Who are you? Who is anyone! I guess I reflect these questions back to you because I sometimes make more of something than what it actually is made out to be and because I sometimes have an enthusiastic attitude. I don’t like to be like everyone else and I like to question about things that I am curious about. Anyway this is a very difficult question to answer correctly. However, I am Neil Dias and I was born on April 16, 1988. I have an older brother and older sister, and I am very close with my family. Since I am the youngest in my family, my parents have babied me the most, especially my mom. I was born and raised in a small town in Long Island and have only known this surrounding. I am a very loyal friend and I always look out for my friends and family. Also, the business world and money has always fascinated me that this has led me to go into business in college. I am very close to my family, and leaving them to go to college is a big change for me, however it’s just an adjustment I’ll have to get used to, and so far it hasn’t been too bad. My father is very reserved, but also he is very intelligent. He’s a retired psychiatrist and he also invests in stocks. He often gives his opinions on problems, and he likes having things done his own way. He is very loving and caring, even though he doesn’t express it much as most fathers don’t. My mom has two jobs. She has been a nurse for over 20 years and a full-time mom for about 27 years. She is very loving and she does express it by always smothering me with kisses. As I am the youngest child, she loves babying me by making me food everyday, doing my laundry, etc. Out of my whole family, I am probably closest with her and we don’t usually have arguments or fights even. My brother Amrish is 27 years old, and he is a mortgage banker. He is the loudest and most outgoing person in my family. Although he has his own apartment and has a successful job, I sometimes wonder how he could still be such a kid. He jokes around a lot immaturely and likes to have fun. I like hanging out with him because he’s fun to be around and I don’t see him too often. My sister Piyanka is 22 years old, and she just graduated from Boston University last year. She majored in psychology, although she still isn’t sure of exactly she wants to do. She’s very caring and she helps me out whenever I need something. We used to fight a lot during our childhood years, but now we both have matured and she even acts kind of motherish with me, by always worrying about me and where I am. I have a very loving and caring family that will always watch out for me, as I will for them. I think that I would be a very different person if I had a dysfunctional family. If my parents were divorced and if I didn’t have any siblings, I think I would be very lonely and a much different person. I wouldn’t spend as much time with my parents as I’d like to, and time that I do spend with them would be when I’m alone with one of them. If I didn’t have any siblings, I would feel like less people care for me, and I may reflect that feeling upon others by not caring as much for them. It is good to have a brother and/or sister that you can go to if you are in trouble and feel that you can’t tell your parents something. Until I came to the University of Massachusetts, I have spent my whole life living in Long Island. I live in a town called Roslyn. There isn’t much to do in Roslyn, so I would go to New York City often with my friends. Very popular places in Roslyn are the diners. No mater what you do on a Saturday night, you will always end up at the diner, even if you just hang out with friends at someone’s house. Over 80% of the population in this town is Jewish, so most people are very similar and celebrate the same holidays. Most people in Roslyn are also very superficial and stuck up. It’s the place where rich teenagers sell drugs, simply because $200 a week isn’t enough from their parents (ask Adam even). The moms look as if they’re in there 20s…and some of them actually are. They have much free time to workout and stay in shape because they don’t work, since their husbands make hundreds of thousands of dollars from owning different stores. I am glad to be out of Roslyn because that is not how the real world is, and I’d like to leave Roslyn because I need to experience life in other places. Although there are many stereotypes of Long Island people being very spoiled and stuck up, I think that I am very different from this stereotype. In fact, I think that living in Long Island has actually kept me farther from living into this stereotype because I observe around me a bunch of people like that and I realize that it’s not the right way to live. I understand if my parents don’t want to buy me $500 jeans or a $1000 jacket…The last thing I am is spoiled, that’s why during high school I had a job and earned my money on my own, so that I could buy things for myself and be independent. During elementary and middle school, I was very hard working and I was one of the smartest kids in my grade. I would make sure all of my homework was done and that I was prepared for every test. Then when I started going to high school, I made friends with a lot of the older kids and most of them were slackers. The more I hung out with them, the more of a slacker I became. I started not to care about school and I didn’t mind if I got a bad grade on something. Whenever my mom would tell me to study, it would just make me not want to study less just because I don’t like people telling me what to do. My grades would get lower and lower, and I would care less and less. I could care less about the half-life of carbon-14, because I knew this would have nothing to do with my future. I felt most of my classes were a joke and that they didn’t challenge me at all, therefore I had no motivation to do well. By the time senior year came by, I was one of the biggest slackers in school and I was known for falling asleep a lot during class as well. To show how much of a joke senior year was, I would bring in a pillow and blanket and just fall asleep in most of my classes, and my teachers wouldn’t be surprised if they saw me just sleeping in the back of the room. I couldn’t wait for college because I knew college would be much more of a challenge. In college, I knew I could focus on what I want to study and I would take the courses that would help me the most for my future and try to stay very business oriented, in terms of classes. Also I can control when my classes are and this helps tremendously because a big reason why I didn’t try so hard in school was because I was half-awake, and only had about 6 hours of sleep each night. The extra sleep in college has definitely made me feel more enlightened and ready to work. I am now very motivated to do very well and my goal is to stay as close to a 4.0 GPA as possible. During high school, I was very close with my friends. I had two main groups of friends, and I was close with both groups. As any other loyal friend would, I’d help my friends when they got into trouble…and my friends always got into trouble. I’m usually the medium person who tells them to stop before they do anything stupid. For example, there was a time when we were all on a train and my friend and his girlfriend were sitting down, then some kids came onto the train and one sat down next to my friend’s girlfriend and he kept staring at her and when the train shook he “accidentally” felt her up. When the kids got off the train, so did the rest of us…but my friend went to go beat him up. I tried talking him out of it, but he was just too mad. Then some of my other friends started trash talking the kids, and before you knew it, a fight broke out…well actually it was just my friends beating up some kids without getting hit once. I lied and told them the cops were coming so they’d stop, but the cops actually did come and everyone ran away, except me because my friend was still on the ground punching one of the kids and I didn’t want to leave him behind. I tried pulling him off of the kid in time for us to run, but we got caught. Although nothing happened to me, my friend got arrested. After this whole experience, my friend learned his lesson and definitely matured greatly. He now tries to avoid fights when possible. Another example of my loyalty is when one day my friend threw a party, he didn’t mean to have many people over…but the party got blown up and people were coming from every direction, so it got to the point where we had to stop letting people in that we didn’t know. A squad of kids came from a nearby high school and they all wanted to get in the party. My friend told them that they couldn’t get in because he didn’t know them, and then they became upset and angered. The five of them started throwing punches at my friend and they got him down and they kept punching him. Then me and another friend ran in to save him, and the two of us basically beat up the five of them. It was like Rush Hour 2 because my friend and I were both black belts, so we just used teamwork and took down all five of them. If I didn’t see one of them attacking me, my friend did, he would take them out before they got to me, and visa versa. After the fight was over, people around us just clapped and we helped my friend back in the house, but we also had to end the party. I think that if I wasn’t raised in Roslyn, I wouldn’t be as much of a loyal friend as I am because it is hard to find a truly dedicated and loyal friend in Roslyn. Therefore I value this trait more and I also seek for this trait in other people. Ever since I was small, I have always been fascinated in money. I started working when I was 5 years old. I would vacuum the house, wash the cars, massage my dad’s head, etc. Within about 2 to 3 years, I already made $3,000 and put that into a mutual funds account. Everyone in my family would borrow money from me and I would charge interest to them…even though no one would pay the interest charge except for my parents. My goal in high school was to be able to get enough money so that I could buy the car that I wanted. I started working a lot and I started raking in the cash, but it was never enough. By the time I was a senior I had saved about $13,000, which isn’t bad but it wasn’t enough. I decided not to buy a car because I didn’t want to waste all of my money on a different car than what I had in mind. I wanted to buy a used Honda Accord, and add a bunch of extra things to the car, such as a nice stereo system, tinted windows, neon lights, I wanted to lower the car and put better rims on it, etc. I realize now that even if I had saved enough money for this car, it wouldn’t be financially worth it because if I had gotten insurance under my name, it would be about $4,000 a year, which is just too much. Also I probably would have gotten sick of the car in a few years because that type of car is better for a high school kid, instead of someone more professional whom I’d be in a few years. My goal now is to be successful in college, then join a good graduate school and then possibly become an investment banker because I like the idea of retiring early, that would give me a lot of time to do other things such as spend more time with my family, open up a new business, have more leisure time, etc. Overall I am a very determined and caring person. I have showed these traits in my essay and I believe them to be true. I have my goals for the future, and hopefully in 10 years from now I will have loving and beautiful kids, a high paying job, an expensive car, and a banging wife!

--ndias 13:05, 3 October 2006 (EDT)