My name is Aidan Kocher and I live with my parents, my sister, and 3 dogs. This personal narrative is about the phases of my life as well as other aspects like my goals and my day to day life. This first phase will be about my life in the past and what life was like as a child compared to now. I was born in Fredericksburg Virginia on November 29 2005 and I lived there for about five years and I don’t have too many memories from when I lived there. The things I do remember are things that were most important to me back then like watching the movies Nemo and The Reef nonstop. Back then I watched those movies at least 20 times each yet I still enjoyed every second of it. I also remember waking up early to grab breakfast, go downstairs and grab my Nintendo Ds so I could play without anyone bothering me. My most vivid memory from Virginia is when I climbed under our porch and almost got stuck. It happened when I was 3 years old and I remember the only reason that I climbed under there was to get a toy that got stuck under the porch. My mom told me that she was so worried and could not find me. She said that she was about to call the fire department to get me out but I ended up being able to climb out on my own. 

When I turned five years my mom got a better job offer in Albion Michigan and she decided to take it so we moved there. We only lived here for about three years until we moved again. Albion was an older town where some parts weren't very nice but overall it was still a nice town.Albion is probably my least favorite place we lived at. My mom worked at the college there so we always got to go to football and basketball games for free. There wasn’t very much to do in Albion other than the college and go to the park to play on the playground. Usually to pass the time I would build legos or watch youtube because there wasn’t much to do there. This is the time when I started to like sports even though at the time I only liked soccer which now I don’t even play anymore. Back then I played soccer and baseball but I didn’t really like baseball until I was older. Halfway through my third year going to the school there my parents told me we were going to move again and that made me very sad because this was the first time I had made good friends and I didn’t want to leave them. Even though I was sad I had no choice so after 3 years of living there we moved to Bowling Green Ohio. From my first impressions of the town it looked like the nicest town we were going to live in so far. Bg was my favorite place we lived in since we lived there the longest for about 6 years, and because our house was close to a lot of friends and places we could go.

My mom worked at the college in Bowling Green(BG) as well, so we could go to lots of football and basketball games. At BG the stadiums were a lot bigger than the ones in Albion so it was more fun to go. The teams were also a lot better, especially basketball. I think one year BGSU was ranked for basketball.  Also since my mom got a better job there we could get free food when we went to the games. Once I got old enough I would just ride my bike everywhere because everything was so close. At the end of my 7th grade year my parents told me we were moving again and this was the most sad I had been in a while because I lived here the longest and had the most friends. It is hard to move places and make new friends after you just lost some because you had to move. Even though I was sad it wasn’t going to change my parents' minds about moving so we moved to Springfield. Springfield is nothing like BG because everything is so spread apart and it is a bigger town in general. I also don’t think Springfield is as nice as BG.

Springfield could be a really good town in time but right now I don’t think it is a very good town due to some parts not being very nice. My most favorite town we lived in was like the opposite of Springfield because most things we went to were within 2 miles of our house but in Springfield some things in town are 30 minutes away from our house. The only thing I live kind of close to is Shawnee highschool. Currently I still live in Springfield and still go to Shawnee highschool. I play basketball, baseball, and I run cross country. I am thinking about playing golf instead of cross country but the conditioning for xc is very good for me.

I wish that I could do both golf and cross country because then I could get in shape but also have fun at golf. I am usually a straight A student but I may occasionally get a B if it is a really hard class. This year I have not gotten any Bs yet even though I am taking Pre-Calculus which is a college class. The second semester is going to be harder in Pre-calc because this is when we start college credit. I still believe I can get an A and I probably will but it will be harder than last semester. I hope that I will have almost most of my highschool credits done by my junior year so that the next year I will be able to come in late and maybe leave early. Also going into college I want to have a decent amount of college credits ready for when I start. 

In the future I am not really sure what college I want to go to but I don’t want it to be super big but I also don’t want to go to a small school.My favorite colleges are Michigan State and Pittsburgh but that doesn’t mean I am going to one of those. Whatever colleges give me scholarships and are in the best location and I like them those are the ones I would go to. If Pitt or Michigan State gave me a scholarship I would take it and go to one of them. I am also not sure what job I want to do but I have some in mind that I think might be some good jobs for me or ones that I have been interested in. When I was a kid I always wanted one of the really cool jobs like being an astronaut and going to the moon or a different planet. I wanted to be one so bad that I sent a letter to Neil Armstrong and he sent a packet back with pictures from space and one of them was signed.

By the end of my career I hope that I can retire as a millionaire. I just recently started a retirement account and I am starting off by putting 3000 dollars in it. I plan to constantly put money into it after every paycheck I receive from my jobs now and later on. Right now I work hourly jobs but later on I am sure I will get paid with a salary so it will be a little easier to budget and to plan how much I want to put into my retirement and savings accounts. My goal for money is to make a budget each month so that I can keep track of my spending. I never want to get into danger with debt so I will try not to do monthly payments for things so I don’t have interest. I know that I can’t buy a house with cash so I will just pay interest for that but I could pay cash for a car. 

In my life I don’t only do boring things I also have things I enjoy doing. Some of these things include playing baseball or basketball, playing video games with my friends, and I like to listen to music. Right now I play basketball everyday because we are in season so we have practice. Practice does get a little annoying sometimes when we run a lot but I still enjoy doing it. I am not playing baseball very much right now because we aren’t in season. I need to start throwing soon so my arm doesn’t hurt throughout the season. I like to play xbox with my friends and I also play the oculus vr with some of my friends that have it. I listen to music a lot just when I am doing homework or I am working out because it distracts me and gets me more on task.

I live in a family of four plus three dogs so it can be chaotic sometimes with them. I love my parents but they are always telling me to do stuff which can be annoying. They always give me chores to do no matter what I am doing like homework or doing other chores. My sister is the most annoying though because since she is younger than me I feel like she gets everything handed to her by my parents. She is only two and a half years younger than me yet she barely does anything around the house. When she does get chores she gets easy ones like cleaning her room which should already be done. I get the chores like picking up dog poop or picking weeds while she just gets to stay inside and do the easy stuff. She is also always trying to tell me to do the chores she doesn’t want to do but I always say no then she gets mad. The only thing she does more than me is take care of the dogs because she is home most of the time.

There are many things that I like but there are also things that I don’t like. For example I like school but I also hate it at the same time. The only reason I kind of like it is because I get to see my friends there but the bad things about school make me not like it. I hate having to wake up early but school makes me do that 5 days a week. I also don’t like the work we do in school even though some of it is necessary, I believe that a lot of it is just tedious work that we probably won’t need in the future. The homework is the worst part about school because we already go to school for 7 hours and then I come home for a little bit then go to basketball practice. By the time I get home I am tired and want to rest but then I remember I have homework. The worst is when I have a lot of homework and we have a basketball game. On these days I don’t get home until at the earliest 9 but away games I get home later than that which sucks because I have to do homework when I get home.

For my day to day routine most days I just wake up early to go to school or practice and come home to lift and then homework. After I have all of that done I have freetime so I will usually play xbox or watch a show on my phone. On Sundays I don’t have practice or school so all I do is lift then I have freetime for the rest of the day. On the weekends I normally have more chores and at home stuff to do because I don’t have school. For school days I go to sleep around 10 to 10:30 and I wake up around 6. I wake up early so I can get a shower before school. The shower wakes me up in the morning so most of the time I'm not tired unless I barely get any sleep. When I don’t get much sleep I will drink coffee even though I don’t like it. For breakfast I will eat either a cliff bar if I'm not very hungry or some cereal if I am hungry. When I get to school I go to the first period which is guided study which helps me do my homework from the night before.

After school I always either have practice or a game so I will sometimes stay at the school but I normally go home first to get ready. Today we have a game at KR which we hope to win. The varsity won last time and they should win this time as well as long as we don’t play bad. The final thing I want to talk about in the narrative is what defines me as a person. Many people have different things that define them like how they treat other people or their hard work they put into stuff they enjoy. I don’t think someone should be defined by how good they are at something but rather the effort that they put into it. Some people put lots of effort into things and still aren’t good at it, which is just because everyone in this world was born differently. I believe that I am defined by my effort and how I treat others. Many people in this world judge others just based on appearance and I don’t think we should do that. Everyone should have a chance to show that they aren’t what other people think they are but we don’t give them that chance because we judge them too early. I also try to put my max effort into the things that are most important to me like school. Even though I don’t like school it will give me a good future as long as I put effort into my work.