Carter Harvey

Period 5
My Life So Far
To start off this paper I might as well introduce myself. My name is Carter Harvey; I was
born in Salt Lake City, Utah in Saint Marks Hospital. The date of my birth is December 20th,
1997 and I was born sometime around noon. After my birth I lived in Salt Lake City with my
mother and my father for four years until my mother and father divorced. The only thing I
remember of the divorce was my mom, little brother and I walking to my moms red Jeta. After
that we went to California and lived there with my mothers mother. My grandmother lived in
Walnut Creek and there my mother, little brother and I stayed there until I was eight years old.
When I was eight, my mother rented an apartment and we lived there for three or four years. The
apartment was really small, and my little brother and I had to share a room. I remember the first
day of moving in and I had this little T.V set up on the floor and I would watch movies like
Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke. Then my mother found a new home that was much larger,
both my little brother and I having our own rooms. We still live there to this day.

The one thing that Ive always been good at is video games. My dad is really into
computers and computer games, so when I was young he would teach me how to build
computers and how to use them. More importantly, he would show me how to play games on
them. The computer Im using to type this paper is one I built two years ago. Ive been lucky that

Ive been able to play computer games and to make my own computers; its a pretty expensive
hobby if you want the best tech. But since technology is advancing so fast, what was state of the
art last month is now out of date, bordering on archaic. Besides computers and video games,
movies are a large hobby for me as well. My dad has this huge bookshelf full of movies, and my
dad set them up in a way so that kids movies are at the bottom and the more mature movies
would be on the top. The movies would scale, so for example something like Spongebob would
be on the bottom, but, say, Saving Private Ryan would be at the top or near the top of the shelf.
So the older I got the more movies I was allowed to watch. Now that Im seventeen, I can watch
whatever I want, but since Ive been moving back and forth between Utah and California, Ive
had the time to watch a lot of the movies before I turned seventeen. Most of those movies would
be Schindlers List, Saving Private Ryan, the Mad Max series, and stuff like that. I never really
thought they had a negative effect on me, and I watched them when I was a teenager so I didnt
lack the understanding to really get what was going in those films, and to understand that what
they depicted (excluding Mad Max) had a lot of moral weight to them. This interest in film has
driven me to write my opinions on the movies Ive seen. I started this only recently as an
assignment for Mr. Nunes and my portfolio isnt very large, Ive only reviewed 9 movies so far.
Hopefully, though, I will continue to write about movies, it clears my head and makes me focus
on other things than school. Another hobby of mine, that I wish I had more time to do, is
camping and hunting. And when I say camping I mean backpacking, no trailers or camping
parks. I like to go out into the wilderness with horses and some supplies, and just experience
nature at its fullest. I hunt small game up there with a .22 with my brother and cousin and I just
hang around a camp fire with my Grandfather as he tells on of the hundreds of stories he has. My
grandfather was the one who really got me into camping and hunting. He grew up on a ranch

when he was young, and he was even a cattle rancher for some time in his adult years. So these
experiences had certainly made an impression on him and I think he wants me to learn those
same skills so I can be ready for most things out in the world. One thing Ive always wanted to
do was to go out into the mountains with my friends here in California. I havent asked if theyd
like to do something like that, but Im sure they would love to try it out. It would be fun to go out
there and to use the skills I learned from my grandfather without his help. It would also be a
good experience to just sit around a campfire with my friends, without any filters on our
conversations, and for us to be on our own without adults around. Of course wed put safety up
first, gun safety, fire safety, animal safety, things like that. The last thing Id want to happen
would be to have an accident up there. My grandfather wouldnt let me hear the end of it.
Speaking of my friends, I have ten friends that I talk to on a regular basis. I dont have a go to
friend, I trust all of my friends and I feel comfortable around all of them. But my best friend, and
the friend Ive known for the longest is my friend Benny. We met in 7th grade while I was
attending Foothill Middle School. I was in the same gym class as him and I used to annoy him a
lot. In the beginning he hated my guts, and I loved to toy with him. But soon our gym teacher got
fed up with us always fighting all of the time, so he gave us an ultimatum. Either we become
friends or we get into a lot of trouble. So we sort of came to a truce, and for a while we just
avoided each other. But one day I remember asking him a question. I dont really remember what
I asked him, but soon we were having a conversation and we really hit it off. We seemed to have
a lot more in common than we first thought. Soon enough he was crashing at my place almost
every weekend, and were friends to this day. Its a bit sad though, now that hes going to be
graduating this year. Since hes graduating hes going to go to NAU in Arizona, so its going to
suck not having him around. I guess thats what the internet is for. Speaking of graduation, I

dont have a clue on what Im going to do after I graduate. Hopefully Ill go to college, but I
dont even know what college Id like to attend after I graduate, or if I even want to go to
college. But even if I do get into a college I dont know what I would want to major in. People
tell me that I should calm down, and not worry about it, but now that Im seventeen years old
Im getting more and more concerned about my future. I dont know what I want to do for a
living nor do I know what my major would be. Im hoping I will figure these things out as I grow
older, but for now I have no clue as to what I want to be or what I want to do with my life.

I dont really like talking about what my political beliefs are as I dont really have any. I
think that the American constitution is great, and we should follow it as it is. But now it seems
some of the rights listed on the constitution are being taken away and our police force seems
more like a military than a civil service that are employed to help and to benefit a community as
a whole. Religiously speaking I use to be a Mormon but now Im an Agnostic. I was Mormon
because my whole family on my fathers side was raised Mormon, including my father, so I was
always curious about it. Im thankful, though, that my family never forced their religious beliefs
on me, and that Ive always had a choice in what I want to believe, but I was always still curious
about religion. This curiosity was sparked in seventh grade when we started to learn about the
crusades in my history class, especially how leaders can use religion to control a mass of people.
This control can compel people to kill and have hatred towards a group of people the previously
had no quarrel with. I dont want to start preaching about how god is completely speculative and
how, to me, religion sounds crazy to me. It makes me laugh how on one hand a supposed
benevolent, caring and an all knowing force of power who claims to care about you, would, with
the same hand, cast you into hell, a place of eternal suffering. I see it more as a way for powerful

people to take control of the vulnerable, but religion does have a good side to it, like most things.
It can bring people together and build communities. About my morals, I dont really know
exactly what my morals are. I try to be a good person, and I think, for the most part, I am a good
person. But we can all be less than good people at times, even without knowing it. For example,
I think murder is a morally wrong thing. I mean, youre taking the life from a person who had
thoughts, cares, loves, hates, opinions and ideas. But it would be nave to think that we could live
in a world where people wouldnt kill each other. Its not pleasant, but thats just a fact of life,
and people have to accept it. But my moral stance on murder can be vexing at times. What do I
say to my uncle, who I know killed people when he was in the military? Do I hate him because
of that, or do I forget about what he did in war and just remember how Ive always known him?
Its hard for me to make exceptions like this, and I hate calling them exceptions, but I cant just
completely throw away the friendship that I have for my uncle. Now for the big questions: Who
am I? I dont know, all I can say is that Im a seventeen year old teenager who is just living. But
despite that flat outlook, Im enjoying life; I like where I am, I like the friends I have, I like the
school Im going to, I like my teachers; things are going pretty well for me right now. But life
isnt always fun, sometimes we have to endure hardships, but in the end most of these hardships
improve us, and make us better people, they forge who we are. I had an experience that really
made me who I am today, and that was when I moved to my fathers home in Utah when I was in
eighth grade. I had never lived there during a school there, and I would really only visit my
father during the summer and some holidays like Christmas, so I decided to give living there a
try. During that time in my life I was very spoiled, shy, and not very well motivated. So when I
was suddenly thrusted into a new home, a new school, and a new state I had a hard time dealing
with it all. For the first few months the house didnt have heat, so no heating or warm water

during the winter since the heater was broken and my dad didnt have the money to replace it.
Its not that we were barely scraping by, my dad has a well-paying job, it was just hard at the
time since he just spent a lot of money flying me into Utah and paying for school supplies and
things for me to use at home. So, my move didnt have a good start to say the least. Since I was
also put into a new school it was hard for me to make new friends. I was really shy then, and had
a hard time meeting new people. I was bullied a lot, and the few friends I had werent much of a
help. A few stepped up for me but most times I got bullied they were around. My grades were
bad, and despite the anger I received from my father I just refused to improve them. I also had to
do a lot of chores for my father and in California I never had to do any chores, my mom did all
of the cleaning. All of this combined, I was depressed and angry so I projected all of this onto my
father, and in doing so this caused him and I to fight. Nothing physical, we just shouted at each
other a lot. At the years end I just wanted to fly back to California, back to my friends and to a
comfortable life where I wasnt bullied or forced to do chores. But when I boarded the plane, I
started to feel sad, and I missed my father. The plane ride was an odd experience. On one hand I
was relieved, but I had this feeling of sadness that, at the time, I couldnt tell why I had it or what
it meant. Finally when I landed and walked into my mothers home, I understood what the
feeling meant. I was sad that I had left home, as much as I hated it at the time, it was still where I
was born, where my father lived. Despite all of the fighting we had and how it seemed my father
was disappointed in me, I called him a day later and we talked and made up, for the most part.
After that, I started to apply all of the skills I had learned during my time in Utah. I had a tougher
skin when it came to ridicule, and I started to help my mother out more with chores, getting most
of them done before she came home from work. My grades improved as well, as I didnt want a
repeat of eighth grade, and that feeling of failure. As much as I hated the whole experience when

I was living with my father, in retrospect it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me.
If I hadnt have gone I dont think Id be the person I am today, and I like who I am now. I dont
fully know who this person is yet, but I like where its going so far.