Memoir #2 PDF

Preview

Summary

Memoir #2 required assignment ...

Description

Family is something that is so important to me and to who I will be. I grew up in a relatively large family. I have three brothers and when I was 13 we adopted a litter girl from India. When I was younger I used to tell people that I was raised by boys. Since I had only brothers until I was thirteen there wasn’t very many “girly” toys around my house. When most girls were playing with dolls I was playing with swords. I learned how to throw a football, shoot a basketball, and hit a baseball better than any of my friends. My house was always very loud and obnoxious; my poor mom defiantly had her hands full with the four of us kids. I am very much a homebody and a peacemaker in my family. As a kid my dad used to say that I was “a rose among the thorns” when it came to my brothers and I. As kids my siblings and I were constantly bickering about everything but almost every argument ended up in one of us laughing. As we’ve gotten older my brothers and I have stayed very close, I see them almost everyday still even though we no longer live together. Having a sibling that is from another culture has changed my family and our ideas about our own culture. My sister was eighteen months old when we adopted her, and although she has no memories of her life in India we have tried to incorporate some of her culture into our own. It is very important to my mom that she doesn’t lose her sense of culture and that part of her identity. Because of this we have several new traditions in our family that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. In India they have a tradition to sprinkle someone with rice on their birthday, it was something that her orphanage taught my parents about, and her caregivers told them that it was very important. It’s a tradition that we still continue and my sister loves. From these experiences I have been exposed to much broader cultures than I would have had we not adopted my sister. This also taught me to be accepting of people from other cultures and backgrounds at a young age.

Another thing that was important to my family growing up was religion. I was raised in a LDS family with parents that were fairly conservative. My parents are very open to other people having different beliefs than them; they however are very unchanging in their ways. They taught me to be myself and to live my own life. As a kid I was never pressured to accept their religion, and they encouraged me to live my own beliefs. While I am no longer religious I do believe that the LDS church has guided my life in many ways. It is a very family oriented religion, which I believe is what has given me my views on family, as well as being very directed towards being kind to others and helping others when you can. I think that in places where there is a dominant religion sometimes it is hard for parents or children to be accepting of other people’s beliefs because they don’t see it as often. When everyone you associate with have the same beliefs it is easy to isolate yourself from those who are different than you. I consider myself very lucky to have been raised in a home with parents who are accepting and understanding of other people and their beliefs. Another thing that has made me who I am is my competitive nature. I also believe that this is a trait that I get from my family. Whether it was sports, grades or something a simple as a card game, my family was always competing with each other, not necessarily in a bad way. As I grew up that competitiveness with others became more internal and I began to become competitive with myself. I was very driven and self motivated to improve myself. I always strived for A’s in school and constantly wanted to be improving myself. I think that my competitive nature naturally led me to athletics. I played almost every sport that I could growing up. I always wanted to try something new. I love the feeling of competing and being part of a team. Throughout my childhood I played mostly team sports and I loved it. My teammates became my best friends and so many of my favorite memories are because of

sports. In the middle of high school I stopped playing team sports and began running track. While I still had a team, track is very much an individual sport. You can’t count on your teammates working hard in practice in order to win your event. The outcome of the meet is entirely on you. At the beginning this was very hard for me. Initially I didn’t enjoy this feeling of blame when something went wrong, but now it has turned into something that I love most about my sport. Im on the track team at the University of Utah as a high jumper currently and I love it. I think that it is one of the biggest parts of my identity. Another thing that I love about track is that, even though it is considered an individual sport my teammates are always their to support me. It is a weird feeling having some of my best friends as my biggest competitors but we all are able to drive each other to do better. My competitive nature hasn’t just been in sports. I think that it is part of every aspect of my life especially in school. My goal in life is to work with kids as a physicians assistant, however most P.A schools are becoming very competitive to get into and because of this I have to spend a lot of time doing school work to make sure that I maintain grades good enough to help me get in. I have known for a long time that I wanted to work with kids I just wasn’t sure in what way, but a lot of my life choices have led me to the medical field and currently being a physicians assistant is the best option for me. I currently work at Huntsman Cancer Hospital, and from working there I have also become very interested in working with cancer patients in the future. I am interested to see how the experiences I have now will shape my future and my future career. One thing I believe in is that everything happens for a reason and that the events in your life all shape you and leads you in the direction that you are supposed to be going in. I believe that each of our decisions have a consequence and that these consequences will shape our future into different ways.

I have lived in Utah my whole life. My senior year of high school I was determined to move out of state for college but after researching different places I fell in love with the University of Utah. I do think that once I graduate I will move to various places around the country, just to have the different experience that it will bring but for me Utah will always be home....