Krystal Perez

5 March 2014

ENG 1121-D428

Essay #1

Who Are You?

Just take a moment and think about the question, “What makes you, you?” I’m not asking you to come up with an answer having to do with genetics but to think deeply about certain things that influence you enough to have an effect on your personality and behavior. Some people can’t answer this. I have grown into be the person I am today because of things I have experienced. There are many different certain aspects in my life such as my family, society, and my education that influence me and have helped shape me into the person I am today.

Growing up, similar to many other young girls I’ve always looked up to my mother as a role model. My father and my mother separated before I was born, so my father has always been distantly in my life. However, since we never did live together and my mother was the one always around, she was always the only one really there for my sisters and I. I have seen my mother struggle in ways a mother shouldn’t need to do. The older I got, the more I learned to understand the difficulties my mother faced in putting food on the table every night, paying the bills that needed paying, and supplying my family with other necessities. The older I get, the more I’m starting to realize how much I don’t want to live the same life she lived. Life struggles are inevitable and nobody can live a perfect life, but I don’t want to have children at such a young age the way my mother did. Watching my mother go through so much makes me want to be successful so that I can give her the life that she deserves and continue the rest of my life in such a way that she won’t have to provide for me and my sisters. This has also taught me how to be more of an independent person.

A time so difficult in my mother’s life has brought some insight to me as to the person I do and do not want to be when I get older, and the person I have to be now. I was always the “baby” in my family until I was eleven years old, when my mother had my little sister. I went from always getting what I wanted to being known as the “middle child”. Now I bring my little sister everywhere that I go. Knowing that she’s always around me has really helped me become the person that I am today. When she says certain things like, “You’re the best sister ever” or, “I want to be like you”, it just makes me realize that not everything can be about me. I know that there’s more to my life than just thinking about myself and my needs, when I have to be a better person for her. The way that my mother was always there for me and my older sister, makes me want to be there for my little sister so that she can know that she doesn’t have to go through anything alone, and that I will always be there for her.

Where I live, people I have to see every day and my friends are all variables of society that influence my life just as greatly as my mother and my little sister. I was born and raised in Harlem, New York City and there is no question about it that the area that I live in is a dangerous place to live. Being located where I am, I have learned to be strong because of losing people to the streets and wanting to not falling into peer pressure. I had more friends when I was a child than I do now because sadly all of the females that I befriended when I was younger are now single teenage mothers. These people that I associated myself with showed me what it’s like to fall into being a statistic. They also made me realize that I don’t want to end up like them. I have the potential to be the person they couldn’t be.

I have never traveled outside of this country, mostly because of my fear of airplanes, but the thought of this pushes me to want this type of lifestyle. I can see that the world has a lot to offer me and this motivates me to try and be as successful as I can to experience it. When I am older I want to be able to say that I’ve traveled to many different countries and met many different people and learned about many of their different customs. I am not afraid and ashamed to say where I came from but I just want to start my own life somewhere new. I want to be able to leave the place I grew up in where it belongs, the past.

I never had trouble as a student. I graduated sixth grade with the title Valedictorian and graduated High School being rated third in my class. I’m also very competitive when it comes to school, which has helped me get good grades all my life. I always worry about getting low grades which causes me to study more and leads me to having better grades. I’m confident about my intelligence and ever since I was little, it was always my dream to become a nurse. Not everyone will agree with the decisions I make about my future, and some people even tell me that I can’t do it. However, knowing what I want to be has led me to become more and more self-motivated.

Along the way, many things in my life have had a great influence on me. These things come in forms such as experiences with my family, like my mother’s struggles and being a good enough role model for my little sister, the society around me, and pursuing my education. So, as I have asked before, what exactly makes you, you? Sometimes the answer is right in front of your face, you just haven’t realized it yet.