The things that make people who they are can be very complicated, being built from many experiences and events. People like to say things about how the past is just the past and it doesn't affect them now, or about how they do not have any regrets. Regrets are a necessary part of becoming a better person. The regrets and events of our life are what make us, us. We wouldn't be the same person if we lived in a vacuum with no outside forces acting upon it. We are based on events and those events define who we are. How we react to trauma, how we choose to stand once we fall make us who we are, and the idea that events in your life don't affect who you are as a person is incredibly naive. Think about how childhood traumas still affect people well into adulthood. The idea of having no regrets is the ideal, but God only knows I have regrets. I would be a completely different person if I went to a different high school or elementary school. Even the little things shape who I am as a person like whether or not I am friends with someone.

There are many moments I regret, believe me. One regretful memory that stands out is my first girlfriend all the way back in 5th grade. As with all 5th grade romances, it was the end all be all of human creation, we were destined for each other, clearly the universe served no other purpose than to put us together that fateful class. We were disgusting, braces filled, balls of pre-pubescence, and man was it vile looking back. In the moment it was pretty good, but the standards weren’t that high. I took this girl out on our first date and we went to dinner, then a movie, a classic, nothing could go wrong. I was wrong about that. We first went to dinner with a parental escort, which was as painfully awkward as it sounds. After our meal had arrived, I devoured it with extreme incompetence. How do you improperly eat one may ask? I am not exactly sure myself, but I am certain that I was missing the prime objective of landing food in my mouth. I then proceeded into the bathroom and spent way too much time in there defiling it. We then went to the movie, we watched some romantic comedy with Channing Tatum. Several times during the movie I tried to slide my hand over her shoulder with the classic yawn technique, and boy that didn’t work. We eventually took a very awkward car ride home, I spent the whole time wallowing in my failure and awkwardness. Getting out of the car and entering my house was such sweet relief. I thought I was gonna regret that day for the rest of my life because of how awkward I was. I did end up regretting that evening in many ways after, but not because of how I acted, but because who I was with. The girl I was with turned out to be crazy, and not in the way that's manageable or funny. She thought that the Earth was 6000 years old, that Alaska was a Country,  and that evolution wasn’t real. Regret never works out the way you think it will.

Last year in World History we learned a lot about various religions and faiths, we read texts from beliefs. This quote stood out to me, even looking back a year later. “And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life.” -Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha  The author is very good at describing how the bad and good make up people, and how regrets and bad emotions are necessary. We feel all these emotions and they make us who we are. Regret is an important part of our lives. This quote opts for a ying and yang style where you need both light and dark, good and bad. We need both to not only survive, but to thrive. In most high schools it is becoming a running joke how much you regret who you were in middle school, or even as a freshman. We acknowledge our regret in a healthy comedic way. We understand regret is important in this way, we know things were bad and that things are getting better.

Finding yourself vs. Creating yourself.

I often hear people say “Throughout childhood you spend most of your time trying to find yourself.” They say this is the reason that childhood is so hard, but to that I disagree. To me, the idea of finding yourself is synonymous with a having a destiny. I believe that you spend your life creating yourself and your future, it is not found, and you are not born with specific purpose. There is no short cuts in doing that because creating and molding the person you want to be takes hard work. Naturally you are born with a certain amount of personality and talent through genetics, but success is created after you are born, not before. The search for real self is fiction, your personality is not waiting to be stumbled upon one day. If the search for true self was reality, when it is finally found you would become static, without any real reason to be ambitious, because anything out of that comfort zone would be considered “Not being yourself.” Although having your own opinions are unique to the specific person, having a destiny is not real. Everyday you create yourself with thoughts, actions, and dreams. It is a life experiment to mold what you like and what you don’t like. The rest is up to the person, and the people who influence that person. The people that influence you play a extremely vital role in creating yourself. What is considered as finding yourself, is misconstrued with having society’s restrictions define you. The influence that society has on a person's spirit is stronger than anyone would like to admit, and even the broadest categorization of humans are made by our society. This is shown in the article from The New York Times "Race and Racial Identity Are Social Constructs.” The article states that:

Race is not biological. It is a social construct. There is no gene or cluster of genes common to all blacks or all whites. Were race “real” in the genetic sense, racial classifications for individuals would remain constant across boundaries. Yet, a person who could be categorized as black in the United States might be considered white in Brazil or colored in South Africa.

This proves the idea that society has created broad guidelines for people's lives. I believe that these constrictions make people afraid to overstep boundaries for fear of “not being yourself.”

Finding your personal identity, and your belonging in this world, are composed of different factors. Realizing who you are, and all the things that you feel are not just random. It’s who you are, and there's something very important that makes you who you are. The important aspect of building your identity I want to focus on is how your past experiences shaped who you are today. From everything you have done, and what you have gone through, you have learned from, and sometimes benefited from, has built who you are. I want to go into deep research, and discover why a person is that person based from their past. Or in better terms, “Declan’s Attempt at Psychology.”

In The Great Gatsby, the author did a terrific job with building the identities and personalities of his beloved, and hated characters. Jay Gatsby, the man who has lived it all. He’s one fancy talker, a complete class act, and a very persistent man. But why? It all came from his past. At a young age he was poor, but he had a glimpse at the society of the socially elite and fell in love. He attempted everything he could to reach that society once again. He was taught how to speak like one of them, and he was taught how to act like one of them. This all came from that one life changing experience in his past where he saw the glamorous lifestyle, and it has altered his life in the most grand way. When Scott Fitzgerald was writing The Great Gatsby, he had to think about a few things when designing his characters. Their intentions, motivations, preferences, and their personality. All of those things are formed from what you have experienced in the past, and how you dealt with those situations.

According to Drake Baer from Business Insider, that we are indeed affected by what's happened in our childhood which turns you into the adult you are today. “Tons of research shows that our adult behavior stems from what we experienced as kids.” An article on paradoxical.wordpress.com, a writer speaks on how your past experiences shaped who you are. “Our response to situations, and events in our lives are all shaped by our experiences. Your thought process, our mind set, attitude, aspirations, expectations, and social behaviour are all altered or shaped by our experiences.” This is what Maaher Sayeed said about how are past has changed us. “Most of us feel anxious or experience irrational thoughts from time to time. Often there is a relatively simple background or explanation to why we are acting or thinking in an anxious or irrational way – this may for example be because of certain events in our childhood which make us sensitive in particular situations or it may be because of recent events, or a mixture of the two.” This what David Bonham-Carter had to say about the connection of your past affecting your life in the present. Writers, filmmakers, and other variants of story tellers all have to think about who their characters are, and why they are that way. I have noticed in any form of storytelling, the author/creator will give us either a brief or a long story about their past and why they make decisions like they do now because of the past.

In my advanced essay #3 my goal was to explore the question of constructing your own identity and how your awareness of who you are eliminates the idea of wanting to belong. With every advanced essay I've been seeing a development of my writing and descriptive skills. In my advance essay I not only wanted to create a mental image in my readers mind but I wanted to leave an impression on the readers mind.

While watching a Ted Talk given by Thandie Newton in my English 3 class, I was captivated by her accent that I never knew she possessed. Her words caressed my ears and massaged my brain, losing the nerves and allowing my thoughts to flow down into my heart. I went home and later that night I watched the video again. The silence in my room allowed me to analyze every word that rolled off her tongue. Newton confessed her struggle with finding her identity. She spoke on an idea that she assumed most of us believed. She said “We start to believe that belonging confirms our self existence.” I do agree, some believe this idea and they make it a part of their lives. But I have also came to the conclusion that when we become aware of our internal differences, the craving of belonging no longer exists. Even if our desire is to fit in, once we know we don’t belong or fit into society’s norms  we will never be able to do so.

Children’s laughter fills the warm house. The sound of little feet kiss the ground passionately as they play around in the house. The children's mother sits at a large brown wooden circle. On top of the wooden circle sits a sewing machine. She looks up occasionally from the fabric that is being pierced by a needle. The doorbell rings and a small brown girl stops her laughter and approaches the door slowly. She looks back quickly before opening the door for her mother's permission. She opens the door and closes it, “Ahhhhhhh, Help! Help! It’s a black man!” The tall dark figure waiting behind the door looks down at the small brown child puzzled but slowly filling with anger. The mother gathers her robe and rushes to the door just to see it is the husband of her friend. He is coming to pick up the garment the mother has made for his wife.

My mother describes this moment just as she lived it.  This was the first black man she seen that came to the door. She had heard bad things about them on the T.V. She didn’t know she was black until her first encounter with racism at the age of 8. Her mother was a caramel color and her father was Puerto Rican, light and pale. He spoke broken english but he was the only man she was taught to call daddy. My mom grew up in a household full of diversity. She lived and was raised in a predominantly white neighborhood. She had three brothers and four sisters; Victor, Mario, Angelo, Santa, Ava, Vida, and Terria. All of their names were from Spanish origin except for hers. They were all yellow-toned and her brown soiled skin made her stick out like sore thumb. Her hair was a thick wild bush of coils and it took a hot comb warmed by fireplace to get it straight.

My mother was the only child with an African American dad. My grandmother’s first child’s, Terria, father was Jamaican and Chinese. Her second child Vida’s dad was Brazilian. Her last children Mario, Angelo, Ava, Victor, and Santa were born to Puerto rican men.

Part of our job as human beings involves mimicking. It’s hardwired into our bodies from evolution. This simple trait, or rather ability, allows us as infants to watch our parents and people around us talk and walk. Once we begin to learn how to talk and speak a language, our mouths just spew out all of the words we know; or for some only saying a few different words to mean various things. When we finally have passed our early stages of communication, we’re able to formulate and keep track of thoughts. And although each human is there own person, these thoughts aren’t really our thoughts. Like how we learn to walk and talk, our thoughts come from our family and reflect what they believe because most of us at that age have yet to understand who we are and what we think. According to a test performed by the University of Michigan, family influences the adolescent

My mother Angela Allen grew up in Plainfield IN, a town with very little diversity - religious, racial, political etc. She recalls a time when she was nine years old where her and her family are riding in their car from my mother’s hometown to where her Grandparents live in Clinton, IN. Angela sat in the back of the car next to her sister while their father was driving and their mother sat in the passenger. Angela noticed the daily newspaper that rested between the two front seats, the paper was the Indiana Star, one of the two newspaper businesses in the state. When my mother’s family arrived in Clinton, they first stopped at a family friend’s house. Here Angela played with her sister and her friend Mary Anne in the backyard while adults talked on the patio. Angela overheard the adults discussing political events. Angela was familiar with the topic and excitedly said “I know about that. I saw it in the Indiana Star!” All of the adults looked over at Angela and one of them chuckled and said “Only Republicans read the Indiana Star!” Angela was still very new to the world of politics and from her understanding, everyone in her, family was a Republican. Angela said “My grandfather reads it, he’s a Republican.” and to this the same adult responded “Paul Chilton, a republican?!” the adults then all laughed, including Angela’s parents. Angela was confused and it was here where she first realized that people do not have to have the same political opinions.

When we are young, all of our thoughts and beliefs from our family are our thoughts and beliefs. Until we become teenagers. Not always but usually at the age of 12 or 13, sometimes earlier sometimes later, kids start to create their own opinions. At this point most kids have already made their opinions on simple things like their favorite color and what music they like, but when tweens become teens they begin to form deeper beliefs especially about who they are. Later on in Angela’s life she began to think differently from her parents, especially her father who was a bigoted man and held prejudice against many minority groups. Angela recalls sympathizing with the groups of people her father spoke negatively about and she says that her interactions with her father “relate to what my morals and political opinions are today.”

Introduction:

My larger idea in this paper was to develop ideas about how I felt in my school community. My objective in writing this paper was to come to an understanding of where my place was in SLA and if I truly belonged there. I never thought about my identity in school or anywhere really. So exploring along this topics with 3 specific questions for investigation; I think I found a great conclusion.

Final Paper:

I’ve always felt like a small flower transitioning to blossom but I never felt like I was able to blossom as fast as the other flowers. My experiences at different schools have challenged me to either become creative or more constructive. Starting in a montessori for 1st-3rd then transiting into a private school from 4th-8th, I was open to creativity and then slightly told to part from it. The structure of a more strict environment had a toll on me; I felt restricted. Then my first year of high school came and it was different than what I thought it would be. I was used to seeing faces like mine or little to the spectrum of diversity. Transitioning to a community where all general ethnicities were represented was fairly new to me. However, it wasn’t shocking because I understood that the world wasn’t just white and black. Nevertheless just Asian or Latino. It reminded me of a quote by Ani DiFranco “I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort, where we overlap.” Yet, based off what I saw from other kids I instantly began to think that I didn’t belong there. I didn’t feel limited to only associating with kids that looked like me but I noticed that I spent less time with those who didn’t. I didn’t open my boundaries or experience new cultures right away because I was scared that I had change who I was.

When I arrived, I felt like there was only a connection because my brother was an alum. I let my past experiences construct my idea of who I should be and where I belonged. My connection to this community didn’t feel like it was genuine, as if I wasn’t here for myself. I knew it would look good for my college applications and sound nice from word-of-mouth to say, “I’m a student at a Philadelphia magnet school called Science Leadership Academy located downtown.” It sounds so sophisticated from the full lips of a black girl. Another girl looked at from the world as loud, rude or aggressive and labeled. I didn’t want to fit in this stereotype so I finally developed my own reason for coming to SLA: To make the standards of a black teenager from the city less cliche-ridden but instead a head turner. Before achieving this I had to tackle the challenges that came with it. So I began to construct my mind in the likeness that in order to achieve success, I must form an identity that belongs here.

From the beginning of this journey all I could feel was intimidation. Trying to associate with a few kids who I might usually see during passing time that hold the door for me. Even the girl in the bathroom who is putting on the same mascara as me by coincidence. Besides the small conversations that started, I didn’t feel like I spoke “SLA’s language.” As if there was heavy dialect that only some could pull off by being shrewd, sarcastic and nevertheless having a love for satire. Yet, I just couldn’t pronounce it or understand it. All my ears heard were the long formulas that seemed to have been pulled from memories like flash cards. While all I saw was the intense ability to solve quadratic functions under 3 minutes. The speed amazed me and my desire to belong began to grow. I felt like I needed to change myself in order to fit into this community.

My peers had an advanced large vocabulary, such as verisimilitude. Compared to my average choice of realism, granted it did mean the same thing but what I thought mattered was the amount of letters in the word.  My mindset was that if I changed myself I automatically didn’t have to identity as the black girl trying the defy the odds of a stereotype or the one conforming to it. Instead I wouldn’t be in that category at all so I could make myself belong somewhere else. Yet, I didn’t know what belonging should even feel like; just having friends? Being “smarter”?  Solving problems and answering questions quickly? Quoted from the book titled The Great Gatsby, “I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” (Chapter 2)  In this community, the only way that I could feel less intimidated but instead inspiring to grow to survive was to relate to my peers.

          Some of my peers I found a connection with also said that they didn’t know if they belonged here. By the time I finally began to understand this all better, I was entering 11th grade. Truthfully, when I was writing this paper. I’ve thought about how different ways to develop the idea of belonging relates to myself. In a result, if we are all so different and the only similarity we have is being different, what is belonging? I don’t think that belonging exists, but nobody really belongs. We all rely on each other to accept one another, and since we make up the community it shouldn’t be conformed to a standard. Yet, I do think identity and self-identity does exist. In addition, it takes courage to not conform to standards so you can really think hard about who you are. I still can’t confidently say that I know who I am; barely what I even like. Plus it takes time to identify yourself.

So I am very comfortable in the idea of not knowing myself yet. Thus, beginning a part of myself in devotion to further question who I am and where I belong.  So far, I know that I could beat the label of a black teenage girl in our society without conforming to an code-switching identity. While also knowing that I belong at SLA with my own ideas, vocabulary list and achievements all fit enough to be attributed. In conclusion, I don’t know much else about myself but I’m willing to learn and experience more to let my true identity blossom.

Introduction

My objective in writing this paper was to come to an understanding of where my place is in the discussion of race, the reason being that I have a great passion for the subject.  While brainstorming I was hesitant to carry on with this idea because of the controversy of the topic.  Yet I concluded that my best writing would be produced from a topic I was most passionate about.  Along the way I got lost in finding the larger idea for there are so many areas to explore within the topic of race.  In the end I came to a conclusion about what I wanted my message to be.  I am proud that I carried through with my primary idea instead of backing down in fear of the controversy that the topic may hold. As I continue to write I would like to analyze sources to a greater extent.

Final Draft

Ever since I was a child my mom would exclaim over how delicate and fair my skin is.  Not until I grew older did I comprehend what being white truly meant. Those who are born with white skin are gifted with privilege.  Because of this some of us live in a world of ignorant bliss, a “white bubble”.  In the Jose Antonio Vargas documentary White People these statistics are mentioned in relation to the “white bubble”, “the typical white American lives in a town that is more than ¾ white (77%, as described in the documentary) and the average white person’s group of friends is more than ninety percent white (91% to be exact). “White bubble” or not, as a race we have not been forced to come to grips with how the color of our skin impacts us as people of color have.  Yet when discussing race, it is unavoidable and people get uncomfortable very quickly.  As a fellow white person, I am very passionate about the issue of race and though I have never experienced racism and do not have the ability to do so, race is something that deeply impacts me. When attempting to discuss race I myself feel a pressure as if I will cross a boundary and violate everyone in the conversation.  These feelings of discomfort raise the question of what it is that gives our race such discomfort on the topic. One man in A Conversation With White People on Race, a video By Blair Foster and Michele Stephenson provided courtesy of The New York Times, touched on a plausible answer, “I think in part it comes from a sense of shame and guilt about what racism has done and kind of how racism was built by white people.”

In the book Learning to be White: Money, Race, and God in America educator Henry Giroux is quoted stating this, “Race increasingly matters as a defining principle of identity and culture as much for white students in the 1990's as for youth of color in the 1970's and 1980's. Race significantly frames how white youth experience themselves and their relationships to a variety of public spaces marked by the presence of people of color.” Though this book was published in 1999, this quote is still relevant today. This statement is not an invitation to praise white people as a race, but to raise awareness in their minds as to how being white effects themselves as well as others in a public setting.  Some white people would like to describe themselves as “color blind”.  According to the documentary White People “¾ young, white Americans say that society would be better off if we never acknowledged race.” While some white Americans think this is a solution to racism, they are further burying their heads in the sand. Though it is nice to entertain the idea that everyone is equal in a society, the truth is we aren’t. There is racial profiling that occurs every day and white civilians reap the benefits because of their skin color regardless of their opinion on the matter.  Pretending that there is no issue will not bring us closer to solving the problem of racism at hand.

In A Conversation With White People on Race one white woman reflects that “I really did not know that I had a racial identity. I knew I was white. I had no idea what that meant, how that had shaped my outlook on life, how that had shaped my sense of optimism, sense of belonging, sense of safety, sense of feeling entitled to go help children that I thought were part of a community that couldn’t figure out how to help themselves.”  As white people in the 21st century it is imperative that we realize that each of us has a racial identity. Considering racial identity, as well as the “white bubble” and “color blindness” the white community seems to be invited into the conversation of race.  However these are conclusion which are coming from a white female in today's society based off of her own research, so take this as you will.  There is still much gray area to be covered.

When I was little, I wanted to be a superhero. Not the ones that had x-ray vision, super speed, or the ability of flight. I wanted to be the heroes that didn’t need any superpowers to change the world. They were the ones that ignored the fear, the odd, and still succeeded. I called them modern day heroes. I wanted to be a modern day hero . However, the way they were made out to be, it  was like their identity, who they were, was so extraordinary, weird, and perfect. It was like they were this special individual that normal people could never hope to achieve.

I felt that I would never have a chance to identify with the heroes. There are many heroes,  great leaders, and all around great people that we can think of ,but what makes a person a true hero? There are common theme that show that a true hero is one that is very generous, helpful, kind, loving, etc. But these characteristics are what we all posses, We are always good the same way we can have our bad days. How we identify people as heroes, is by how they possess all the qualities that we associate as only good people or the strong contain. Which is why some heroes are so relatable. And what makes them a hero is that in their worst moment with all of these negative qualities, they still attempt to do what is right for our community.

Andrew Solomon did a Ted talk on “How the worst moments in our lives make us who we are” and he said that “You need to take the traumas and make them part of who you've come to be, and you need to fold the worst events of your life into a narrative of triumph, evincing a better self in response to things that hurt.”  We learn from experience. We learn what it means kind, treating people the way we want to be treated, because we know what it feels when people are  mean, We know what it means to be greedy because we have experienced some form of generosity. That’s just who we are, and how we make our world better.

So if we know all these characteristics from experiencing the good and bad, and acting on them ourselves, but we define most heroes as people who only do good things,   then can someone really identify to be truly a perfect hero? Where does our true selves fit on that black and white scale when we are born as grey areas. Nobody is born a hero. when you look at a newborn baby you don't know if they will be future killer, or savior. And that is what makes it so incredible, and a little bit scary at the same time. A nobody has the ability to be the hero as much as the hero can have the ability to be a nobody. Heroes, the ones that we call the best of the best of society don't always dress in a cape with white light surrounding them. They are, most of the time, regular normal looking people. Which makes it hard distinguish which is which, and explains why the heroes can be mistaken as the nobodies. Going back to Andrew Solomon’s ted talk, he said  Identity involves entering a community to draw strength from that community, and to give strength there too. It involves substituting "and" for "but" -- not "I am here but I have cancer," but rather, "I have cancer and I am here." From that, I can see that we can all be heroes, because we all have have the ability to address the shortcomings that makes us who we are, and still do good. And if we all realize that, I truly believe we can make the world better in our own hero ways.