Personal Values

From my perspective, Values are those things that define and really matter to us. The ideas, beliefs and convictions we hold as special. It stands for what is beneficial, important, useful, desirable, etc. Each individual has their own unique values guiding their choices which we call Personal values, whereas there are the broadly shared societal sets of beliefs which are known as Cultural values. I will be discussing my personal values and its correlation to the cultural values of the San Antonio College community and how these values will help in the accomplishment of my educational and career goals. According to Morris Massey, a well-known sociologist, values are said to be developmental, starting from birth to age 21. This led me to consult with my mom, who had known me all my life, about some of the characteristics she had noticed during this period. It came to me as no surprise when she mentioned ‘resilience’. This attribute is one of the main reasons I’m where I am today. Resiliency is the ability of an individual to cope with various kinds of adversities and bounce back to a previous state without any negative effect. These adversities may be physical, mental or even spiritual. Growing up in a family raised by a single parent, it’s not hard to tell why I have this personality. Research has shown that struggling parents utilize practices to help promote resilience within families. A certain sociologist, Christopher B. Doob, pointed out that, "Children growing up in resilient families have received significant support for doing well as they enter the social world--starting in daycare programs and then in schooling." This one quality laid the foundation to many others such as intuitiveness, inquisitiveness, self-reliance and more to come. As I grew older, I built on these virtues of mine, which played a major role in my upbringing, by putting them into action. A very good example of this was in high school. I had just been given a science project which was due in a week. The teacher had given us all the information we needed, all that was left was to build upon the limited knowledge we had to carry out the assignment. My classmates and I were placed in different groups of 5 to do the assignment, which was very vital in nurturing my inquisitive nature. So we had to sacrifice most of our recess in order to get the work done sooner. Day-by-day, we thought we had drawn closer to a conclusion of the project. Fortunately, my intuition told me that we were on a divergent path and we were just a few days from turning it the project, which made me wonder if it was possible to start over. I was just on the brink of quitting when I remembered what had gotten me where I was. And there, that vigorous resilience kicked in and at the same time brought light to self-reliance. I got on the project right from my bedroom and began to conjure up a solution to present to my peers the next day. By morning, I, as well as my peers, was satisfied with the new conclusion I had come up with. This was one of many incidents I had to put my values into action. "Success is determined not by whether or not you face obstacles, but by your reaction to them. And if you look at these obstacles as a containing fence, they become your excuse for failure. If you look at them as a hurdle, each one strengthens you for the next" - A quote from Dr. Ben Carson's 'Gifted Hands' constituting the philosophy on which my life is based. With that said, as I fix my eyes upon the values of San Antonio College, I place myself among the individuals able to thrive in this college because I believe I have the qualities needed to succeed and surpass the expectations and high standards of this institution as well as many others.