My Personal History Narrative From The Beginning Of The Semester

Culture shapes our identity and influences our behaviors. Living in California has been an open-minded journey for me because of diverse cultures, lifestyles, and people’s thought. Although, I learned to adopt the positive of a new culture and abandon the negative ones. It seemed like I could easily lose my cultural identity while I am accepting a new culture. However, After I took the class I even feel a greater appreciation on my own race, ethnicity and culture. I think my identity will never change. I will always consider myself as a Chinese because my own culture has shaped me into who I am no matter where I live and whom I married to.

My palms were sweating, my heart was racing, I had no idea what to expect or who I was going to meet. I was never the type of girl to embrace new situations, I hated change and I wasn’t very good with meeting new people. I figured once I got to high school it would be my chance to start all over, turn the page in my book of life, and flip over a new leaf. I wanted to finally be the girl that fit in with everyone. I had imagined myself going to parties with big groups of my new friends, having sleepovers and doing all of the things cool high school kids normally do. I was certain that my high school career would be just like one of those really corny teen movies and I would live happily ever after with the homecoming crown and the boy of my

Since the start of the semster I have learned many different things about myself and how I can become a better student all around. Summer classes can fly by fast and doesn’t feel like a real semester. That it is just to get credit and move on to the next semester. That was not the case for me this summer semester because I needed to think about the rest of my college career. This summer semester is my first one coming back from academic suspension and I took last semester at South Plains College and Tarrant County College. I did really well making a 3.00 GPA overall and am most likely going to make a 3.5 this semester. This will be a huge boost to my overall GPA. The point is am at the point where I am ready to graduate and will try my hardest to get the best grades I can. I really just changed my mindset towards college and the way I prepare for tests and studying.

Junior year. My junior year I realized things about myself that I hadn’t previously known. Things I’ve never done before and things people thought I couldn’t do. Situations I thought I wouldn’t be in and there I was. Junior year, I did it.

“I am Korean. South Korean to be exact.” These were the words I would always use to describe myself during new encounters. My race seemed to be what people noticed about me first. Whether I was at a leadership conference, church, or cross country event, there was always someone asking where I was from. For this reason, being an immigrant from Korea has been a big part of my identity as an individual and student.

My pre-adolescent years were spent in a community thick with diversity. My friendships were as diverse as the environment in which I lived. It never struck me that racial and ethnic ideals separated people in society. However, upon moving to a predominately white upper-class community I began to question such racial and ethnic ideas. From my adolescent years through today I began noticing that certain people are viewed differently for reasons relating to race and ethnicity. As a result, the most recent community I grew up in has kept me sheltered from aspects of society. As a product of a community where majorities existed, I found myself unexposed to the full understanding of race and ethnicity. Prior to the class I had never fully dealt with issues of race or ethnicity, as a result I wondered why they would be of any importance in my life.

Recently I have been evaluating what I think to be my own racial and cultural identity. As a Caucasian of mostly German decent who grew up in the upper Midwest, I blended in with the majority of people around me. Due to this fact, I did not often think about race, and when I did it was thinking about how others were different than me and the rest of ‘us’. I was a product of my culture and the society surrounding me; I regret this thinking now, and do deeply apologize.

If confronted with racial prejudice, the magnitude of one’s response to any given incident depends on personal awareness, sensitivity, along with growth and maturation of the individual in interaction with his or her interpersonal environment (Franklin, 1999). The level of awareness and sensitivity to one’s interpersonal environment is represented by what theorists define as the attributes and behavior manifested by the various stages of racial identity development (Franklin, 1999).

A person’s owns racial and ethnic identity is impacted due to youthful familiarities. This is brought out through adolescence and remains throughout their life. However, a person’s growth development varies from person to person is contingent based on their race and ethnicity, and there are five stages that contains evolving racial and ethnic identity. The five stages are the Conformity Stage, the Dissonance and Appreciating Stage, the Resistance and Immersions Stage, the Introspection Stage, and the Integrative Awareness Stage. During each phase, Atkinson et al., (1998; Sue & Sue, 2008) emphasizes the client’s outlooks for self, others of the similar minority group, others of a diverse minority group and outlooks concerning the lead group.

Before I started school I went to daycare instead of pre-k. There were three teachers that I can remember and they were Miss Amanda, Miss Jessie, and Mrs. Teresa. Out of all of them Miss Amanda was defiantly my favorite Before I started school I would go to daycare four days a week and Friday I would stay at home with my dad because back then he had Fridays off. We went to daycare because we do not live near any of our families. I liked spending the days at daycare and also at home with my dad. When I was a kid I was pretty shy and reserved kind of like I am now also. When I was little my hair was very short and extremely blonde. My food favorite food when I was little was meat. Any kind everything from chicken to steak. One memory I have of being in daycare was when one day I pulled a

While reading this week’s reading, I felt a connection with Desiree White. For instance, the first thing she mentions is, “…of course you would notice if someone had different skin color than you did, but to be honest, I didn’t ever think about it. Everyone was the same to me when I was a kid” (White, 2013, pg. 33). I can relate to this because I remember feeling the same way when I was a kid. Even till this day, I still feel this way. I am just more aware of everyone and their unique characteristics. I know for a fact that my identity has a lot to do with my parents and how they shaped me to be. In terms of race/ethnicity, it wasn’t really their choice. I identify as White/Hispanic. Additionally, if we are just talking about me I am currently

History is written by the victors. Bringing my middle school history lesson on the American Revolution to the dinner table, my brother snarked that I was a sheep for believing that our founding fathers were the most noble and perfect men simply fighting tyranny. A bit embarrassed, but more driven to eventually upstage him, I began questioning every rendition of the facts. I started seeing a clear bias everywhere from CNN to my history textbook. People like packaging the truth into tidy schemes splitting the world into black and white to best serve their interests.

I remember being a little girl and hiding behind my mom when someone came up to me to say hello; I used to be so nervous to even meet their eyes. At our family get-togethers, for Christmas and New Years Day, my family attempted to start conversations I would politely smile and hide behind my closest parent. I remember her telling me “It’s okay to say Hi to the people I talk to, just do not talk to strangers.” I tried to listen to her and follow her instructions but every time I would try chickened out.

Last summer, I participated in the Student Historian internship at the New-York Historical Society (N-YHS) and navigated from New Jersey to the museum every day. During the internship, I researched, wrote, edited, and formatted a blog post on a piece from their collection, now posted on the N-YHS website, demonstrating my strong research and writing skills. I am currently taking a photography class and enjoy using DSLR cameras in manual and automatic mode. Moreover, we learn about shutter speed, depth of field, aperture, and ISO as well as how to adjust the camera in order to take the best possible picture. In photography class, I take weekly photos on various subjects as well as edit and enhance photos in Photoshop. Last year, I took a sculpture and ceramics class where we not only learned how to create sculptures and ceramics but also the elements of sculpture and design.

Being a freshman is the hardest of your four years in high school. Have you ever been pressured to be the best person you can be? This is how my year was as a freshman. Freshman year was the most different I never thought I would of found my way around the school when I first started to go there. Freshman year was the best year throughout my years of high school and it was the only year I had friends. During this year I had a lot of anxieties which dealt with me thinking I’m gonna be alone and not have any friends throughout the year to support me through the whole thing. Also, I would think of the pressure of not doing good in any of my classes so I would think it would affect my GPA in the future. The transition from middle school to high school was a different type of thing to do.