Extended About Me (part 1 of 5)
Hi Blog-world!
I found one of my first grad school papers in my google drive, simply titled "Story" (I'm guessing the prompt was to write a mini-autobiography?), and it provided some great Friday re-motivation, as well as some good material to kickstart the blog. Basically, it's a more in depth look at my story and how I came into student affairs, and for some reason I feel like it's a good time to review and acknowledge my history. Without further ado, here's part 1 of 5:
The beginning is always tough to read...but I'm a big believer in that our past and trials have significant impacts upon each person's development.
Next parts over the next few days :)
Many people are surprised to hear that I am an only child, and yet I feel that my status as an only child made a profound impact upon my life and how I developed into the person I am today. Perhaps due to being born on December 26, I always had to share my birthday with the excitement of the holiday season. As a child, telling my birth date always solicited responses ranging from, “Whoa that’s awesome!” to “Man, that sucks,” instilling in their minds conceptions about me. Arbitrary things, such as I must be resentful at getting fewer gifts or that I loved Christmas songs, were based on my birthday, something that I had no control over. I couldn’t change their minds or correct their thinking because I myself had little understanding of how my birthday shaped me as a person. What it did enable me to understand was that people created their own ideas about me which may or may not be aligned with how I really felt.
As an only child, I doubted that I ever actually got fewer gifts (being sufficiently spoiled by my parents), but having no siblings, I had no benchmark to compare my experience with other kids. This uncertainty in how other kids lived their lives permeated through how I socialized in school and how little of my home life I shared with others. Ever since I can remember, I know that I had extremely loving parents who doted upon me, but did not share this love with one another. Being the only child meant that I had to witness many fights and process on my own.
When looking at my parents’ friends’ families, the other only children came from single parent homes, with absent fathers. My parents were two young single twenty-somethings, immigrants in America living far from their families, but who decided to build their lives together. One of my first memories regarding the two of them happened when I was about five years old, and my parents got remarried in Las Vegas by a judge. When they got remarried in Vegas, with me as their witness, I remember simply envisioning that this meant that our family would be happy like everyone else’s. When I realized that this was not going to be the case, I began to wonder why my parents got back together if they were going to be unhappy anyway. I came to the conclusion that they stayed together for the sake of raising me to be successful.
Thus, even at a young age, I put a lot of pressure on myself to do anything that I thought would make their sacrifices worthwhile. I was a quiet, bookish child. I behaved well wherever I was, barely asked for anything (making the Christmas/birthday combination extremely convenient because I only had to think of things to ask for once a year), and constantly thought out the consequences of my actions, especially the conversations I brought up. If during one car trip I mentioned how my friends took soccer lessons and that led to a fight about how they felt an imbalance of responsibility picking me up from school, I made a note to never mention soccer lessons again.
I found one of my first grad school papers in my google drive, simply titled "Story" (I'm guessing the prompt was to write a mini-autobiography?), and it provided some great Friday re-motivation, as well as some good material to kickstart the blog. Basically, it's a more in depth look at my story and how I came into student affairs, and for some reason I feel like it's a good time to review and acknowledge my history. Without further ado, here's part 1 of 5:
The beginning is always tough to read...but I'm a big believer in that our past and trials have significant impacts upon each person's development.
Next parts over the next few days :)
Many people are surprised to hear that I am an only child, and yet I feel that my status as an only child made a profound impact upon my life and how I developed into the person I am today. Perhaps due to being born on December 26, I always had to share my birthday with the excitement of the holiday season. As a child, telling my birth date always solicited responses ranging from, “Whoa that’s awesome!” to “Man, that sucks,” instilling in their minds conceptions about me. Arbitrary things, such as I must be resentful at getting fewer gifts or that I loved Christmas songs, were based on my birthday, something that I had no control over. I couldn’t change their minds or correct their thinking because I myself had little understanding of how my birthday shaped me as a person. What it did enable me to understand was that people created their own ideas about me which may or may not be aligned with how I really felt.
As an only child, I doubted that I ever actually got fewer gifts (being sufficiently spoiled by my parents), but having no siblings, I had no benchmark to compare my experience with other kids. This uncertainty in how other kids lived their lives permeated through how I socialized in school and how little of my home life I shared with others. Ever since I can remember, I know that I had extremely loving parents who doted upon me, but did not share this love with one another. Being the only child meant that I had to witness many fights and process on my own.
When looking at my parents’ friends’ families, the other only children came from single parent homes, with absent fathers. My parents were two young single twenty-somethings, immigrants in America living far from their families, but who decided to build their lives together. One of my first memories regarding the two of them happened when I was about five years old, and my parents got remarried in Las Vegas by a judge. When they got remarried in Vegas, with me as their witness, I remember simply envisioning that this meant that our family would be happy like everyone else’s. When I realized that this was not going to be the case, I began to wonder why my parents got back together if they were going to be unhappy anyway. I came to the conclusion that they stayed together for the sake of raising me to be successful.
Thus, even at a young age, I put a lot of pressure on myself to do anything that I thought would make their sacrifices worthwhile. I was a quiet, bookish child. I behaved well wherever I was, barely asked for anything (making the Christmas/birthday combination extremely convenient because I only had to think of things to ask for once a year), and constantly thought out the consequences of my actions, especially the conversations I brought up. If during one car trip I mentioned how my friends took soccer lessons and that led to a fight about how they felt an imbalance of responsibility picking me up from school, I made a note to never mention soccer lessons again.
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