Me

Hey, I’m Elizabeth Shumaker and I’m currently a sophomore at Whitney Young. I have an older brother and two younger sisters. During school breaks we drive for at least five hours in order to visit our family that lives in Michigan. My grandmother on my mother’s side was born in Italy and was brought to the United States when she was eight years old. When we visited she would tell me stories about Italy, what her life had been like, and stories about her neighbors. My mother works as a preschool teacher and because I used to get dragged along I became more adept at putting up with kids. My father works as a scientist and he shares his office space with a few other people. These people often tell jokes to each other and my father will in turn tell us the jokes when he came home because they were “hilarious.”

I am on the high school swim team, I do club swimming in between the end of my season and water polo. I also swim throughout the summer and do dryland after practice. I normally end up missing a lot of practices when it’s not my season, so I’m around the average varsity speed for my events. My favorite things to do, if I were to exclude the options of sleeping and eating, would be to doodle, to read, and relax. I’m not very skilled at speaking and I don’t like to be a part huge crowds. Some of the foods that I like to eat are ice cream, chocolate, and curries.

However, I don't have "favorite" things. I can determine whether I like, dislike, or have neutral feelings towards something, but I can't honestly say that I like anything more than something else. I don’t mind most music as long as it’s not too loud and it isn’t an overplayed song. I don’t have cable so I don’t watch television. I enjoy reading books. I read things ranging from newspapers to adult and young author books to comics originating in America, Japan, or Korea. I also like art because I find it captivating. The fact that such beautiful things could exist and that somebody had put extreme effort into improving their art to create that piece and others like it is impressive and I’m glad that they made those pieces. Everyone interprets different messages from art pieces and it is outstanding that so many different ideas can originate from observing the same thing. However, I find that my liking for art and books is overshadowed by my love for sleep.