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Timothy Nguyen
EAP 121
October 5, 2007
Kung Fu
Projects are always tough and challenging. There are many challenges in life for me it was a challenge in high school. The school that I went to is called Mountlake Terrace High School which is located in Mountlake Terrace. I went to Mountlake Terrace High School for my whole 4 years. I was born here but my parents are from the city called Saigon now called Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. They immigrated here because of the Vietnam War. When I was a senior in Mountlake Terrace High School, in 2006-2007 I was faced with a difficult project. The project was called Senior Project. The project objective was to help the senior students to learn new skills that they not learned in high school. I decided to learn kung fu because I am interested and never learned kung fu before. For the project I needed to write many essays and gave a 20 minute presentation. The students must work at least 40 hours or more on their project outside of school. I realized that my 6 months in school would be very stressful and I might grow some gray hair.
On September 15, 2006, I started my project. My first step is to find a mentor that can helped me on my project topic. This is difficult because after school I have tennis practice. But one day, my older brother Kevin called me. He was trying to see how I was doing. I told him that I am stressing out and I need to find a mentor. Kevin later brought me to our friend Donny’s house. I then talked with Donny about Senior Project and my mentor problem. Donny decided to become my mentor and enrolled me into his Seattle Kung Fu Academy. Finally I felt relieved that my first part comes to an end.
I started my kung fu training in January 5, 2007. I thought the first step of getting a mentor was hard but I was wrong. The training was tougher than I thought. We ran all day and did many physical exercises like push-ups and sit-ups. I thought I joined the military. I never gave up however, after 1 month of training I became stronger. The practice became easier. I continued my training after school on Wednesday and Thursday. It’s almost time to think about my third step on the project.
On March 30, 2007, I decided to make a movie for my presentation. I had never make a movie before so, I had some difficulties. My youth group decided to help me on my movie. My story or film is about me as Bruce Lee beating up bad guys and defeating the main boss. The movie is called The Story of Young Lee. This is not easy because not only I am the star of my movie, but also the director, camera man, and the movie editor. I finally finished filming after 2 months of hard work. I learned how to use many programs to make my movie better. Now finally all I need to do now is to finished everything up and practice for my presentation.
On June 15 2007, it was time for my presentation. I am not good at talking to a big crowd of audience. Even though I was born in Seattle Hospital, I had difficult learning English because my parents do not know any English to help me. I practiced many hours on the day before the presentation, organized my paper work and finished editing my movie. When it is time to talk and give my presentation, I prepared my movie to show to the class and begin talking. I begin slowly but then I started to get excited and talk loud and clear. After I finished talking, I showed my movie. Everybody loved my movie and thought that my movie is very funny. The judges said that I did very well on my presentation, which was well organized, funny and very enjoyable.
On June 25, 2007 I graduated. Looking back on my senior year, I believed that my senior project helped to graduate and also senior project has helped me learned many new skills. I learned how to talk better to other people. I also have learned more about movie editing and to use other movie editing programs. Most of all it was fun being a star of my movie, The Story of Young Lee.