PS please destroy take 2
Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2012 2:00 am
I am a leader and have a group of young men that look to me for moral guidance. I founded a fraternity on our campus. I encourage an atmosphere of collegiality, brotherhood, and camaraderie. I lead a group of men that work toward the common goal of making positive changes on campus. We are different, I am different. I have made the dean’s and president’s list. I give advice to my friends on how to overcome challenges and how to remain positive in tough situations.
“I want to tell you a little story about being an impostor and feeling like I am not supposed to be here” Amy Cuddy
I just started running. I was tired of being told I was a disappointment. I was tired of being told I would never amount to anything. I was tired of being told that no one ever loved me. I was sick of hearing these things for the past 10 years of my life. I was 16 and had just got home from football practice. These were the most common phrases I heard throughout my childhood. It was one filled with blood and tears, with heartbreak and fights, with abuse and neglect.
I was an angry child. My parent were divorced and after years of separation they still could not work together to raise us. After moving back from Michigan my mother was working any job that she could get. We didn’t have much and my grandparents helped us when they could. She had been evicted a couple of times and even on food stamps for a short period. My father followed us and moved to a town north 20 miles. He also couldn’t find steady work and couldn’t afford the full child support payments. He found an apartment that was too expensive but was tired of living in hotels. He would turn the heat on in the winter time when we would visit. He otherwise, wrapped up in blankets and tried to stay warm during the week. I imagine, during my childhood, my parents were angry too. I imagine, they thought it was appropriate to share their difficulties with their children. I imagine they thought it wouldn’t affect their children. They were wrong.
My mother and father consistently put my brother and me in between their arguments. I was the source of contention between my parents and between my mother and step-father. This made me the constant target of their “stress-relief.” Apparently blowing off steam to a six year old is alright. There was one time where the steam boiled too hot for my father. This single event helped shape my life forever. He decided that I deserved to be thrown across the room like a rag doll and screamed at like a dog. Then tossed aside like a old pair of sneakers to freeze in the cold West Virginia winter. I was not the only one affected by this. My brother was also a victim in this case. He lost all trust in our father that night and became a different person. I too became different, for some reason in a positive way. That night, when I was 8 years old, I decided that would never happen to me or anyone else again. Looking back on that night, I became independent. MY brother crumpled into oblivion. In the near future he would begin using drugs, like many in our community. He no longer had a person to identify with. Our step-father was cruel and unlovable and my brother no longer trusted our father. Looking back on that night I became the protector and he became the protected. I was going to determine my own fate and not let my fate determine me.
I did not do this massive transformation on my own. I had help. That night I was running away from all of my troubles and all of the things that had been said to me, I was running to a friend’s house. The people I identified with were my friends and their families. I was given abilities to develop close relationships and to use my intelligence to differentiate between truth and lie. I used this transformation to earn good grades and excellence on the athletic field. Just as Amy Cuddy though, I felt like I didn’t belong, I felt like an impostor. All of my friends were wealthy and I was just middle-class. They could do anything while I had to work. They all were awesome at math and were entering technical fields while I was struggling with Calculus and Chemistry. I let this feeling permeate my human and lost my full-tuition scholarship. Yeah I was working 25 hrs a week to help pay for school, so do a lot of other kids my age. The hours I worked are no excuse for a poor GPA. Once again I was on this path of struggle and was letting my past determine my fate.
Then another phoenix rose from the ashes of despair. In my senior year of high school my father and I began working on our relationship. We worked to repair some of the damage that had been done. I began going over to the house once again and indentified with his best friend. XXX had MS. MS paralyzes the body, but it does not paralyze the mind. At that point XX could still walk and talk. He always told me, “The world is your oyster.” I never really got what he meant until after another horrific accident.
Throughout my upbringing my brother became rather troubled. He got into drugs and unlike me, identified with the wrong crowd. During the fall semester of my sophomore year, he decided to make a late night “magic mushroom” harvest and wrecked on the way home. He was in a coma for a week. I had failed. I had failed to protect him. It was so frustrating, all of negative things that were said to me came rushing back into my mind, and however this time was different. This time I had that quote, this time I had the mindset to control my fate and not let my fate control me, this time I would overcome this. The world was my oyster, meaning I was in the position to forge a beautiful pearl out of my life. I write this in the last semester of my senior year. I have pulled my grades from the gutter and I am beginning to forge that beautiful pearl.
This protecting mentality led me to the Victim Assistance program. I worked within the Prosecutor’s Office of Mon County. I took a phone call one day from a former sexual assault victim. Little did I know that phone call would solidify why I wanted to become a lawyer. He told me his life story about how no one ever cared about him. How he was shunned by his family and made out to be the black sheep. How he constantly felt that he didn’t belong. All my life I had felt the same way, yet I had friends and their families who cared. The transcription of the phone call was the most important thing I have ever written in my lifetime. I no longer felt like a failure. I had given someone a voice. I had made a positive difference in the world. This man was now able to charge his assaulter and finally obtain closure. As I sat in the office and spoke with some attorneys I no longer had the feeling of faking it. I didn’t feel like an impostor, I felt as if I belonged with people that wanted to help the greater good.
The feeling of belonging is the most primitive of the human mind. Everyone has the need to feel wanted. I feel wanted when I speak with lawyers about what they do on a day to day basis. I am not sure what field I would like to enter after school. The one thing I do know is I want to make a change. I want to use the law profession as my vassal to make that change occur.
“I want to tell you a little story about being an impostor and feeling like I am not supposed to be here” Amy Cuddy
I just started running. I was tired of being told I was a disappointment. I was tired of being told I would never amount to anything. I was tired of being told that no one ever loved me. I was sick of hearing these things for the past 10 years of my life. I was 16 and had just got home from football practice. These were the most common phrases I heard throughout my childhood. It was one filled with blood and tears, with heartbreak and fights, with abuse and neglect.
I was an angry child. My parent were divorced and after years of separation they still could not work together to raise us. After moving back from Michigan my mother was working any job that she could get. We didn’t have much and my grandparents helped us when they could. She had been evicted a couple of times and even on food stamps for a short period. My father followed us and moved to a town north 20 miles. He also couldn’t find steady work and couldn’t afford the full child support payments. He found an apartment that was too expensive but was tired of living in hotels. He would turn the heat on in the winter time when we would visit. He otherwise, wrapped up in blankets and tried to stay warm during the week. I imagine, during my childhood, my parents were angry too. I imagine, they thought it was appropriate to share their difficulties with their children. I imagine they thought it wouldn’t affect their children. They were wrong.
My mother and father consistently put my brother and me in between their arguments. I was the source of contention between my parents and between my mother and step-father. This made me the constant target of their “stress-relief.” Apparently blowing off steam to a six year old is alright. There was one time where the steam boiled too hot for my father. This single event helped shape my life forever. He decided that I deserved to be thrown across the room like a rag doll and screamed at like a dog. Then tossed aside like a old pair of sneakers to freeze in the cold West Virginia winter. I was not the only one affected by this. My brother was also a victim in this case. He lost all trust in our father that night and became a different person. I too became different, for some reason in a positive way. That night, when I was 8 years old, I decided that would never happen to me or anyone else again. Looking back on that night, I became independent. MY brother crumpled into oblivion. In the near future he would begin using drugs, like many in our community. He no longer had a person to identify with. Our step-father was cruel and unlovable and my brother no longer trusted our father. Looking back on that night I became the protector and he became the protected. I was going to determine my own fate and not let my fate determine me.
I did not do this massive transformation on my own. I had help. That night I was running away from all of my troubles and all of the things that had been said to me, I was running to a friend’s house. The people I identified with were my friends and their families. I was given abilities to develop close relationships and to use my intelligence to differentiate between truth and lie. I used this transformation to earn good grades and excellence on the athletic field. Just as Amy Cuddy though, I felt like I didn’t belong, I felt like an impostor. All of my friends were wealthy and I was just middle-class. They could do anything while I had to work. They all were awesome at math and were entering technical fields while I was struggling with Calculus and Chemistry. I let this feeling permeate my human and lost my full-tuition scholarship. Yeah I was working 25 hrs a week to help pay for school, so do a lot of other kids my age. The hours I worked are no excuse for a poor GPA. Once again I was on this path of struggle and was letting my past determine my fate.
Then another phoenix rose from the ashes of despair. In my senior year of high school my father and I began working on our relationship. We worked to repair some of the damage that had been done. I began going over to the house once again and indentified with his best friend. XXX had MS. MS paralyzes the body, but it does not paralyze the mind. At that point XX could still walk and talk. He always told me, “The world is your oyster.” I never really got what he meant until after another horrific accident.
Throughout my upbringing my brother became rather troubled. He got into drugs and unlike me, identified with the wrong crowd. During the fall semester of my sophomore year, he decided to make a late night “magic mushroom” harvest and wrecked on the way home. He was in a coma for a week. I had failed. I had failed to protect him. It was so frustrating, all of negative things that were said to me came rushing back into my mind, and however this time was different. This time I had that quote, this time I had the mindset to control my fate and not let my fate control me, this time I would overcome this. The world was my oyster, meaning I was in the position to forge a beautiful pearl out of my life. I write this in the last semester of my senior year. I have pulled my grades from the gutter and I am beginning to forge that beautiful pearl.
This protecting mentality led me to the Victim Assistance program. I worked within the Prosecutor’s Office of Mon County. I took a phone call one day from a former sexual assault victim. Little did I know that phone call would solidify why I wanted to become a lawyer. He told me his life story about how no one ever cared about him. How he was shunned by his family and made out to be the black sheep. How he constantly felt that he didn’t belong. All my life I had felt the same way, yet I had friends and their families who cared. The transcription of the phone call was the most important thing I have ever written in my lifetime. I no longer felt like a failure. I had given someone a voice. I had made a positive difference in the world. This man was now able to charge his assaulter and finally obtain closure. As I sat in the office and spoke with some attorneys I no longer had the feeling of faking it. I didn’t feel like an impostor, I felt as if I belonged with people that wanted to help the greater good.
The feeling of belonging is the most primitive of the human mind. Everyone has the need to feel wanted. I feel wanted when I speak with lawyers about what they do on a day to day basis. I am not sure what field I would like to enter after school. The one thing I do know is I want to make a change. I want to use the law profession as my vassal to make that change occur.