My name is Jon Annunziato and I am a senior at California High School in San Ramon, California. I am excited about senior year because I am in classes that I am actually interested in. I am also excited to almost be done with high school. So far, I am enjoying calculus, physics, photo, and of course iQuest. I am signed up to explore my interest in astronomy and science in my free time that I will get out of iQuest. I have a couple of goals for my senior year in hopes of setting up my immediate future at whatever college I end up attending. Not only do I have goals for my academic performance, but also for my work experience and my hobbies.
Why astronomy? Honestly, when I was younger, outer space scared the hell out of me, but I have learned to look at it in a different way and it is less frightening and also extremely interesting. The reason I am so interested with space started with a quote that I heard. "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself" - Carl Sagan. This was what ultimately started my questions about space and how things work. I started asking things I wouldn't have ever thought of before and what was great was that answers were available because hundreds of years ago people asked the same questions. I watched all of the TV shows on the universe, how it behaves, and how it could have started. There was so much to learn. After watching a documentary about how Galileo crafted the first telescope I figured it was time to buy one. Within the next week I purchased my first telescope and have been viewing the stars and planets since then. I've learned a lot, but there is a lot more. This is why I thought iQuest would be a good fit for me. With my iQuest time I will be volunteering at the Chabot Space and Science Center, operating telescopes and doing demonstrations for the public. I've been doing it since June and enjoy it a lot. I also want to spend some time reading and using my personal telescope and camera for astrophotography.
On top of learning as much as I can about astronomy and space I hope to get a 4.0 GPA for the year. It might be more challenging than last year because of the weighted courses, but I think I'll be able to do it. Another immediate goal I want to reach is just to bump my SAT score up as much as possible. I do really want to get a strong foundation in physics and calculus because I have a good feeling it will give me a good start in college. I want to really learn the two subjects in as much detail as possible. I hope that setting a goal to achieve a 4.0 will help me with this.
I have been working at Clementine's for about a year and a half and I have made a lot of progress there. I started as a host, but I moved to expediter after 8 months of hosting. Now I am in the progress of becoming a server. I want to reach that point by the end of the school year, but the earlier the better. I need to save for college and since servers make a lot more money in tips it will definitely be a plus.
As far as my hobbies go, I have been playing drums and guitar for years and I have no intentions of giving those hobbies up just because I am busy with school and work. I am in two different bands right now and I hope to make progress with both of them during this year. I want to finish up a demo with one of them and I also want to play a couple of shows with both of them. I also spent a lot of time hiking this summer and I wanted to hike to the top of Mt. Diablo, but I never got around to it and that's why I am adding it to my list of things to do this year.
