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Hi, I'm Jan. I am 14 year old 8th grader in an international school in Warsaw. I am an American-Polish child who has been living in Poland for the past five years. Until I was nine years old, I lived in Minneapolis. At the end of this year, I will most probably be leaving back to the States. I play tennis, volleyball, hockey and have been swimming for as long as I can remember. Last year, I started playing acoustic guitar, and it is going so far very good. At the end of this year, I begin electrical. I love food, by all means. Especially Mexican and Italian. So far in my life, I believe I have been very successful and continue to feel this way throughout my career.



I think that I am a healthy person. Not only my physical health, involving my temperature or sicknesses, but also my social, intellectual, emotional and spiritual health. As I mentioned earlier, physical health is involving diseases or sicknesses; pretty much anything that happens to me physically. Hence the name. That means it also includes nutrition, as well as alcohol and drugs. What I eat i consider very important. Just the way I mentioned earlier, I love food, and I would hate to ruin my life by the carelessness I would put in by eating the wrong thing at the wrong time, although I confess to eating unhealthy food at an inappropriate time. I have not drank alcohol or taken drugs yet, and I presume to keep it that way. I have, however, witnessed such occasion on a school trip, when the hostess brought friends, alcohol and tobacco. I refrained from even touching the bottle. When it comes to social health, I believe I am also healthy. Social health involves very mental approaches to health and wellness, and has to do mainly with cliques/groups, and friends. If one is excluded, or excludes others, then they are socially "unhealthy." For the most part, I have been very healthy. I get along with friends very well, and have tried my best to include all who wish to come. There have been occasions in which i did not include all, and they have been mostly under peer pressure, where one person is generally not liked and therefore not wanted in to a group.

Intellectual health, for me, is one of the harder ones. Contrary to popular belief, intellectual health does not only reflect on your grades, but also on your personal habits which in anyway could affect your school life. Things such as not getting addicted to facebook or other social networking sites, doing your homework and going to sleep at a reasonable hour are signs of being intellectually healthy, while getting addicted to facebook, not doing your homework or staying up late, are all signs that you are not too intellectually healthy. As for me, I try to be intellectually healthy, but, again facebook and friends can get me into not being healthy. Emotional health relates mostly to your family, and how you get along with your close ones. If your parents are divorced, and this divides you significantly from your family members, you are not too healthy emotionally. Also how you deal with deceased family members, can significantly injure your health. I have always been very close to my family members, grandparents especially. When they died, I was broken. It took me a long time to recuperate and go on with life. Nowadays, I see myself as very emotionally healthy, and I plan to stay this way. Spiritual health is very hard to explain. It mainly deals with my ethnic beliefs. I am a Catholic person, and attend church every Sunday. However, I often am afraid to admit this, as others may find this awkward or stupid. I try to stick up for my beliefs, and it is going good.



As a young teen, I see many possible risks to face in the near future. Alcohol and drugs are coming our way, and with peer pressure, for many it may be too hard to resist their "friends" persuasions. "It will make you feel great, dude! It's not bad at all!" We will have to learn something we should have learned in kindergarten. Saying "No." Also the temptations to stay up late and chat with friends on a school night are rising, as all you have to do is press a button to start talking to friends. The main idea is that we must be prepared for the risks to come.



Since we are still young, it would be a smart thing to set up some goals. Some goals I would like to have, are mostly involving alcohol and drug abuse. In my opinion they are, as I like to say it, just around the corner. I have many friends who have suffered the terrible results of peer pressure, and I do not want to be next. First of all, I will try to figure out who in my opinion is most likely to get there hands on alcohol or drugs, and steer clear of them as soon as possible. If I do find myself in such a situation, I will leave as soon as possible. If neither of those work, I will do what they taught me a long time ago. To just say "No!"