Please describe the factors and challenges that have most shaped your personal life and aspirations. How have these factors caused you to grow?
I am a unique individual. There is no one on this planet exactly like me nor will there ever be. Since my freshman days in high school I have grown into an intelligent, well-rounded, and reliable person, however the credit for this growth goes not simply go to me. In my journey to become a good person I have had big influential factors on both sides of the positive and negative fence. On the negative side there is the negative influence of my absent father, and my own personal sense of rejection. Whereas on the positive side I have my amazingly supportive mom, and the sense of community and acceptance I have felt by being in Pinole Valley High School (PVHS) marching band.
My Father has always been a part of my life, but more so in spirit than actual reality. Since my childhood I remember always looking up to and viewing him as a hero, only later on in my years did I come to see that my visions my slightly distorted. To put it simply my father is not the most reliable person and is only present when it is convenient for him. When I started to realize this I could not help but wonder if somehow his absence was related to me being a bad son. While one might see this as a sob story in the making, I learned to develop a new mentality based off of my father’s personality, a mindset where I told myself that I would never be my father. I vowed to become educated and reliable, someone respectable and amazing. This is a goal that I think of everyday and inspires me to strive in everything I do and become the best person I can possibly be.
On the reverse side of my father is my mother, who gives me strength every time I look at her. From her I have learned the value of genuine support and surrounding yourself with positive people. She always told me “do not worry about our financial situation, that’s my job. Just worry about school and becoming a good man”. These words resonated within me and allowed me to point my attention toward my academics and extra-curricular activities, without having the constant mental remainder of my financial situation looming over my head. There was even a time where my mother and I were forced to leave our home of 6 years due to sudden foreclosure, and as traumatic as this was to me at first, through me moms optimism and undying faith that we would find a new home I was able to remain calm. Through her love and positive aura I have grown into someone who wants to emit the same positive energy as she, and will not stop until I am able to be reliable as she.
Like a lot of other teens in my generation I have dealt with the problems of low self-image and a sense of unimportance among my peers. From the moment I stepped foot onto the grounds of high school I feel inadequate and awkward. I was not one of the perfect students who were taking all advanced classes in their freshman year or had taken them over the summer. I felt alone, a lot of my middle school friends were either gone to different schools or took a darker path than I. My fear overcame me and instead of learning to be myself I tried to adapt to what would make me the most “popular” and well liked. As a result I became a nuisance and sank even further into my own self-pity. It was only at this low point that I was able to find my saving grace: marching band.
At my school the marching band is about being part of a family, and it is this family that accepted me for the person I was and not the person I was trying to be. As far as I am concerned the marching band was the start of my high school life. It sparked my ideals of giving as much back to the community as possible and being positive role model for future generations. As I progressed through all four years of high school, the marching band has been one of my main support systems, with its combination of having the friends I love in it and teaching me to be a more outgoing person. Without band I know that my high school experience would have led me down a road that I was not meant to go. It has shaped me into an upbeat person with the goal to energize and inspire others.
These factors make up the person I am today, I regret nothing and feel as though I can only go up from here.
what do you think?
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