Matthew Nguyen

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Final Exam Project Personal Portfolio Scrapbook

Introduction
Im Matthew Nguyen (yes the generic start) a senior at Richard Montgomery
High School. In my case Im pretty much like the black sheep in my family, as in not
a loud and party type etc. Main points of interest include gaming, building model
kits i.e. Gundam models, and using Google machines to prowl the internet for new
on upcoming games, tech., and other topics of interest so I can painstakingly wait
for their release. Another area of interest is the world of science and aiming for a
career related to some type of science which Im not sure what I really want to do
yet.

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Favorites
Elementary school:

My first anime I ever watched. It was so

much more different to anything else I had
ever watched at the time; Digimon was a
great influence in my imagination.

The channel that got me

hooked on the mysteries of
the world and the animals
that live on it.

One of the best shows

I had ever seen. The
style, powers,
characters, and story
were unmatched by
any other show.

The crude and creative

humor in the old days was
the best to watch early
on.

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Middle/High School:

A favorite game, Kingdom Hearts

introduced me to crossovers and unique
concepts that I never imagined before.

The second game I

found featuring
characters from
different games
fighting each other
brought a lot of fun
and memories that
continue onto
today.

Everything you could ever ask for

in a car show: Cars, humor, no
political correctness, and the best
trio on television.

Introduced me into the ultra confusing and epic

world of Marvel and constant stream of liveaction movies that we have been waiting for a
long time made possible.

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My Family

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My Family (cont.)

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My Friends

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Religious/Spiritual/Philosophical/Motivational/Points to Ponder

Decades from now

When the birds are all
gone
When their bodies have
decayed
The waste of this
generation
Will remain Is this for
posterity?
Is this our legacy?

With wings of death

And crown of black
A sea monster more
terrifying
Than any creature of the
deep
Is this the epitome of
man?
All pride for greedy
production
So serene in selfdestruction
If suicide is a crime
We would all be guilty

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What Makes Us Who We Are?

This scary question may make our head hurt or make us panic. What actually makes a human
person an individual and what changes through our lives effects who we are. Seven billion people
live on Planet Earth today and every single one of them is different; by their facial features, skin
colour, personal opinions, size, weight, height, DNA and many other differences. But we cant
deny the change our bodies and minds encounter through our lives. If one was to say that what
defines us is our cells and how they are, that would be very incorrect because cells change every
seven years.
You look in the mirror at yourself at twenty years old; you are youthful and feel almost immortal. It
is the peak time in your life where you are most fit and you are ready for almost anything. Jump
ten years into the future, experiences have changed the way you think and look, your cells have
changed completely and you are far closer to death. In this time as a person you will have
matured greatly. Apart from your name, what makes you the same person you were then? In other
words, if, when you were twenty years old, you saw the thirty or forty year old future you, what
would make you think it was you?
We need to take into consideration that although we may be the same mentally, we cannot deny
the physical change which takes place through our bodies. Memories may be the thing that makes
us feel individual, but we could be fooling ourselves and just telling a story.
We are still very naive in this vast universe and are unsure of the events that take place through
our lives. Philosophers are very unaware of the changes that happen over our life time, it could be
developing to make the person youre meant to be, then slowly slipping down to death, or
everyday you could be a new different person to the one you were the evening before.

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Perhaps our human senses are deceiving us maybe existence is an illusion, and reality isn't
real. The idea that everything we know is merely a construction of our minds is investigated in the
next episode of the Science Channel program "Through the Wormhole," hosted by Morgan
Freeman. "What is real?" Freeman asks in the show. "How can we be certain that the universe
around us actually exists? And how can we know that the world we see matches what anyone else
experiences?" Human senses are fallible. What people think they perceive is actually filtered and
processed by the brain to construct a useful view of the world. Normally, this filtering is helpful,
allowing people to sort out important information from the barrage of data that comes in every
minute from their environment. But this filtering ability can become a weakness, as it often does
when we're watching a magician. "A good magician will tap into universal brain processes that
underlie perception," said Lawrence Rosenblum, a psychologist at the University of California,
Riverside and a magician himself. For instance, a magician often directs the audience's gaze to
one hand while he does something with the other. But Rosenblum doesn't see the human
tendency to fall for such misdirection as evidence that all of reality exists only in our minds. "Our
perceptual system can be fooled, but I do not take that at all to mean that we're constructing
reality," he told LiveScience. As members of society, people create a form of collective reality. "We
are all part of a community of minds," Freeman says in the show. For example, money, in reality,
consists of pieces of paper, yet those papers represent something much more valuable. The
pieces of paper have the power of life and death, Freeman says but they wouldn't be worth
anything if people didn't believe in their power. Money is fiction, but it's useful fiction. Another
fiction humans collectively engage in is optimism. Neuroscientist Tali Sharot of University College
London studies "the optimism bias": people's tendency to generally overestimate the likelihood of
positive events in their lives and underestimate the likelihood of negative ones. In the show,
Sharot does an experiment in which she puts a man in a brain scanner, and asks him to rate the
likelihood that negative events, such as lung cancer, will happen to him. Then, he is given the true
likelihood. When the actual risks differ from the man's estimates, his frontal lobes light up. But the
brain area does a better job of reacting to the discrepancy when the reality is more positive than
what he guessed, Sharot said. This shows how humans are somewhat hardwired to be optimistic.
That may be because optimism "tends to have a lot of positive outcomes," Sharot told
LiveScience. Optimistic people tend to live longer, healthier, more successful lives, she said, and
Religious/Spiritual/Philosophical/Motivational/Points to Ponder (cont.)
the act of positive thinking can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. "If you think you're more likely to get
promoted, you're more likely to put in more effort and work long hours," Sharot said. But this
slightly distorted view of the world can also be a weakness a person might continue to smoke
because they don't expect to get lung cancer, for example. Being more realistic is important in
some cases, Sharot cautioned. Physicists look beyond the human mind for external reality, but
even that reality isn't absolute truth. Fundamental reality as scientists understand it is based on
quantum mechanics, a realm where all manner of strange things occur. An electron can behave as
either a particle or a wave, depending on how one measures it. And scientists can measure either
a particle's position or its momentum at any given time, but never both. "Quantum mechanics is
simply the best theory we've ever developed," theoretical physicist David Tong, of Cambridge
University, says in the show. But so much of this reality is by definition unknowable. Another
physicist featured in the show, Steven Nahn of MIT, says "I absolutely believe reality is a real
thing, but that does not mean we understand it." Nahn was part of the team of scientists who
found evidence in 2012 for the Higgs boson, the particle that gives other particles their mass. The
universe may turn out to have more dimensions than we know about, where fundamental forces
behave very differently than how we perceive them. For example, gravity is the weakest of the

Matthew Nguyen
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Beauty
A Helping Hand

Act of
Kindness

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Beauty (cont.)

The Strange Beauty of weapons of

war

And of course Natures

Beauty

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Mementos/Memorabilia

Consoles, games and laptop have a lot of

memories of the past and never get old playing
them. Not to mention watching any movie online if
you look hard enough. Ps2, Gamecube, Nintendo
Wii, Ps3, Xbox360, Gameboy Color & Advance, DS
and 3DS, PSP & Vita games.

Along with the

games includes
wooden swords,
training knives, a
set of katanas,
and various guide
books and other
objects.

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Mementos/Memorabilia (cont.)
Gundam models built
over the years with
progress showing on
each of them

Envision program for George

Mason University for National
Security, Diplomacy, Intelligence
& Defense

Old toys and figures, including a

guitar picked up and kept over the
years.

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Humor

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Humor (cont.)

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Some Memorable Events in My Life

Moving to Maryland all the way from Singapore and starting school here was
really strange for me at the time. I started 2nd grade and getting used to the culture
was somewhat tough, in Singapore I went to an American school so classes felt
normal but the first time I heard the pledge of allegiance I had no idea what was
going on and felt really out of place. The change in the overall layout of the land
was new to me as well as Singapore is pretty much a tiny island and is mostly city
coming to the US was interesting not seeing tall buildings everywhere and seeing
the woods and wide open areas. I mean as a kid at the time I adapted fairly quickly
to the changes but seeing as how I spent about half my life here looking back it was
an interesting point.
The first time I had ever watched a show about animals I got hooked on
science. The Crocodile Hunter was my favorite thing to watch, I would spend my
days watching Animal Planet all day long completely fascinated by all the animals in

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the world. After awhile I started to look for other channels about science and found
channels such as National Geographic and The Discovery Channel and then became
immersed in anything related to science.
Going from elementary school to middle school was a big challenge, in that
we had 7 teachers and had to switch classrooms every period now. The increased
work load didnt help either, it was a lot to take in for the first year and I struggled
with the new routine. Then by the end of 7 th grade I had to transfer schools which
really didnt help at all leaving my friends from elementary school and starting 8 th
grade only knowing 2 other people.

Some Memorable Events in My Life (cont.)

The recent death of my cousin was completely out of the blue. It felt really
weird and I was in a state of confusion and wasnt sure how to react. The last time
someone passed away in my family was back in 3 rd grade and that was my
grandfather. At that point I was too young to really feel the impact of it and it didnt
really affect me as much, however learning about my cousins sudden passing was
really distracting a week before the ap exams and made it that much harder to
concentrate. It was also really strange to see my family sad about something and
Im not used to seeing them cry but that was a pretty tough few weeks to go
through

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Special People in My Life

Steve Irwin was the first to introduce me to the world of animals and really
started my love for science. The adventures he had around the whole world and the
stories he told were amazing and inspiring. He stood for the conservation for all
species and the habitats they lived in and had a passion for animals that few people
have ever had and would go to any lengths to help an animal in need. He was one
of the most recognizable wildlife experts and left a legacy that inspires thousands to
join the same cause he stood for. To me Steve Irwin is one of the most influential
person in my life and a role model to follow for years to come.

Matthew Nguyen
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My parents are the most influential people in my life, there are no other
words for that. They raised me and I see them every day so not being influenced my
them in some way is virtually impossible. They taught me how to speak, walk, run,
write, read, drive, play instruments, play sports, cook, behave, basically almost
everything I can do I learned from them. They are pretty much the most accepting
people I know as well of my actions and I can count on them to help me in almost
any situation. Without them I wouldnt even be alive so of course theyre the most
influential people in my life.
My family is huge and I spend a lot of time with them so they do rub off on
me quite a bit. My aunts, uncle, cousins, and grandparents are a major part of my
life I see all of them almost on a monthly basis and the time we spend together.
Theyre always accepting and help forget the stresses of daily lives.

My Ten Year Goals

In the next ten years my first goal would be doing well in college and later
graduating. Doing well in college could later get a scholarship taking off some of the
pressure on money and would be a boost in self esteem. Once I finish college
getting a steady job that I can rely on for income would be next which would feel
really weird to not have to go to school to learn anymore much like graduating high
school, thinking about how you no longer have to worry about grades, tests, exams,

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and quizzes when you have been doing them for all your life would be really strange
feeling. Then theres the whole thing of moving out and living on your own and
being completely independent from your parents would be even stranger to deal
with. Sure Ive been left alone at home for hours on end before but I know that
theyre coming back eventually and thats completely different from being
completely on your own. In those ten year theres even a chance for relationships to
form (yuck city), but the whole commitment thing is a pain to deal with for me right
now so Im not sure what will happen in the future but whatever happens, happens
so Ill just take things as they come by and deal with them when the time comes. On
the bright side though having complete control over your own money and spending
on whatever you want (mainly on games and tech) is something Im looking forward
to.