My cultural background is Native American, Scottish, Irish, and Canadian; I have been taught a lot about our cultural background throughout my life. I have also been lucky in the area I grew up. I grew up in a very culturally diverse area. Many of my friends from elementary school through high school were from many different cultures. I grew up eating food at friends house that to this day I still cant pronounce.…
My greatest influences are my parents and my brother. My brother suffered from Guillain- Barre Syndrome when he was eight. He lived in the hospital on an artificial ventilation for 97 days and later he had to continue physical therapy for at least ten years as he was completely paralyzed. My parents and my brother devoted their few years completely for his treatment. Today, my brother is a successful engineer working in the bay area. I learned that with dedication, determination and diligence we can achieve our dream in life…
Living with a dysfunctional family has shaped my outlook on life. I never knew I had a keen interest in human behavior and thoughts until my brother went through a middle school crisis. I remember coming home from school to a depressing environment. My brother was bullied which changed his life forever and mine too. I saw how much other human beings can have such an immense impact on one person. I began to wonder whether I would have the resilience or fall victim like my brother. The way people cope with stressful situations made me realize that there is a lot more to humans than I had originally thought. As my brother fell into a deep depression that is when I knew I wanted to study psychology in order to help him and others like him. I believe…
Since I grew up in a family with an abusive father, my response to conflict differs from most people. My father resolved conflict by shouting, degrading, and often physically abusing the other person. My mother’s response to conflict was to try to settle a compromise or walk away until her own frustration was no longer there. I think based off the conflict responses I observed growing up, my responses are a mixture of my parents. When in an intense argument with someone, I attack their character and then silence them out. Family members play a big part in how we resolve conflicts, because a good portion of our lives begin by us spending time with and watching our relatives. We, as a society, adapt skills and mannerisms from those closest to…
My mother’s parents would always share stories with us about how their parents came to America from Italy and Germany. They would bring out old photo albums and tell us all about how different life was for them and how they held on to family cooking recipes and every Christmas we make the same dishes that their parents would make. My father’s parents would also share stories about Ireland and my grandpa would talk about what he experienced when he was in the war. Unlike the family I interviewed, I was brought up in a Christian household. Every Sunday the whole family would attend church together and then go out to eat after to talk about what we had learned. We would also pray every night before bed and were always told to give thanks throughout the day for the life we have been blessed with.…
Growing up, I was unalike from other kids, I was "imaginative". During class, I would always by myself, writing bizarre stories with preposterous characters and with an unpredictable plot, while the other kids were playing with their friends. Many of my classmates would be entertained by loony stories, while other kids thought that I was just some lonely nitwit writing absurd stories to make up for not having any friends. In that year I was relocated to a different school, which I didn't want to go because I didn't have any friends at the school, I was currently attending and it would be much more difficult to make new friends. In the following year, I was still that shy girl in the back of the classroom not interacting with anybody, but it…
Growing up, most of the children I knew would go to church on Sunday’s, visit their grandparents’ house to bake cookies after school, and have milk and cereal for breakfast every morning. But I had never set foot inside of a religious building, couldn’t even speak the same language as my grandmothers, and ate congee with fermented soy beans like it was the most natural thing in the world. My little town where I’d grown up, made friends, and built memories was, to say the least, completely un-diverse.…
I come from a world where the only thing that is constant, is change. Changing states, changing houses, and changing schools. Unlike most other kids, I don't have a childhood home where I made countless memories, in fact, my earliest memories as a child all consist of cardboard moving boxes, along with unimaginably long car rides to foreign places. I don’t have a door marked to show how I've grown over the years, and I don't have a bedroom wall thick with paint covering over colors I chose as a child. Truthfully, often times when I was younger, and would see someone with these things, I was tempted to be envious and couldn't help but to think how lucky they were to have such stability. As a result of this, I spent a large portion of my childhood…
This is an informal essay giving readers an insight on my support system as a child. The things that helped me feel safe as a child. Resources in the neighborhood that helped me grow and blossom. Insight on why I may think the way I do. The focus is to analyze me so I can put aside anything that may hinder me as a Social Worker.…
Imagine looking down at your phone and seeing an incredibly long text message from your best friend. This is inscrutable coming from her, so you start to panic. As you open the message, your heart drops as she reveals that her grandmother, the person she is closest to in the world, has just passed away. This happened to me late my junior year of high school, and my heart broke for her. Concerned, I immediately ordered a large cheese pizza and peach iced tea, her favorite comfort foods, and rushed to her house.…
Shouts and laughter echo throughout the kitchen as my grandparents recount stories of growing up in Mexico as young adults. Everyone’s eyes light up with animation as family members contribute to the conversation while eating homemade tamales and menudo. At each of my family holiday gatherings, the dinner goes beyond the consumption of a home cooked meal. These family gatherings are very important to me and have contributed to who I am today.…
When asked to write about a childhood experience most people think of the time they lost their first tooth when they were 6, or about the time they started school when they were 5, however, I’m going to write about summer. It wasn’t just any summer it was the summer that I went to the lake with my Dad and Papa. I was about 4 and couldn’t be any more excited about what was going to happen…
Personal background starts off small, it changes and grows over time into something big, it grows into an identity. Walking down the hallway at school, seeing someone standing alone, my first instinct is to make conversation, compliment, or even just smile at him or her. This instinct came from someone once telling me an act so small could turn a person's entire life around. As a kid, reading encyclopedias about random topics, consumed my time. Many days were spent coming home to find an injured wild animal in my dad's arms waiting to be saved. My dad would sit outside and draw animals, trees, and anything else he saw. Nothing excited me more than trying to draw whatever my dad drew, and as good as he did. Any assignment that was handed to…
Ever since I was born, I was a military brat. Not knowing where to call home, or if any place could be home, I moved. I moved six times, four of those places were towns that nobody could think about. Germany, North Carolina, Alaska, North Carolina, Germany, and Alaska, yet no place to call home. May 22, 1999, my first day on this world; Kronach hospital had its first American baby in their hands, yet they acted like I was a different species. The only event I remember was when I was about one. While I was one, I grabbed everything in my reach, even a grill handle. As a baby, I did not know that the handle was moving, the grill top had smashed my thumb. Ever since that event, I now have a starfish mark on the side of my right thumb from where the stiches were.…
My first home for many years. This land comes rarer to me as the day…