The Life of Andrew Turner
Andrew Winslow Turner was born on December 16, 1993 in New York City. He is 20 years old and a junior at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. He is currently studying to be a firefighter, majoring in fire science. He is studying fire science because he has always loved to play with fire. His fire science classes have also been his favorite classes he has taken since being in college. When he first started school in fall of 2011 he was studying law enforcement, but switched his major to fire science by his sophmore year.
Turner’s childhood was unusal. He has ADHD and growing up, his parents were absent from home. His mom, Maryanne, worked 12 hour days at Rappaport Publishing, a dieting magazine. His dad, Roger, worked out of state, and often to other countries. His dad was gone for long periods of time and when he comes home, the amount of time is unpredictable.
As an only child, with both of his parents gone for most of the day, Turner has to find some way to keep himself occupied. At the age of seven, Turner developed his main interest in video games. When he first started gaming, he would play Mario games on his Game Boy for hours. He bought a Wii game system and now, although he still has the game system, he now plays online games on a video gaming site called Steam. This way of gaming keeps Turner’s attention all day if he is allowed.
Getting his attention while he is gaming, however, is not so easy. His mom get’s very strict when asking him to get off the computer and sometimes gets so irritated that she unplugs the computer. Turner is also a avid traveler. With his dad’s job requiring him to go out of state, Turner has visited some exotic places. His latest December 2011 when he went to Japan. He dexcribes Japan as,”Just like New York, only cleaner.
” His family is all on the east coast, so he doesn’t travel around the states very much. He has come to Colorado, twice, but he doesn’t seem to enjoy the rural area. Being from the city, he has very strong opinions about places that aren’t urban. He has repeatedly said how there isn’t anything to do here in Colorado, when there is so much more to do in the city. He also has a different lifestyle from living in the city, like eating out instead of eating home cooked meals.
With his parents working all the time, instead of learning to cook, he eats out. For now, he is content to live in the city, but he hopes one day to travel to Europe and move there permently because the “US government is too messed up to live in the US anymore.” Turner also had a different education growing up. Although he is in a public university now, that was not the case when he was in grade school. He attended public school until second grade but left because he was bullied for having ADHD.
He then transferred to Winston Preparatory School for high school. Winston Preparatory School is a private school that specializes in teaching students with ADD and ADHD. With Turner’s different learning style and shorter classes that are only 45 minutes long, he was able to have his learning accomadated and found that he learned better. Now he attends a public university. He still finds the learning a bit difficult. He explained in his first semester, his pre calculus professor “purposely failed me because I have ADHD.” Though he struggled in his calculus classes, he has proven that he is capable of handling anything and is sure to succeed in anything he sets his mind to.
