“You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.” Nevertheless I want to accomplish all that I can throughout my life, gain knowledge, fulfill my goals, and live life to the fullest.. I have countless words that help describe my personality and define who I am. I like to go to car shows, fish, rollerblade, play the clarinet; guitar; and piano, and love to read. I am able to read a 400 page book in a day (depending if the book catches my attention and how much free time I have), I am trustworthy responsible, and loyal , throughout my years in school I have gotten good grades, honor roll and high honors, perfect attendance, and was a part of the diving team freshman year. Hardships bring out the best in me because they reflect my true personality, people that influence me and made it possible for me to find out how to achieve my goals and find out what I really want to do in the future, with these I’ve learned how to be more mature, responsible and most of all find myself.

A person’s personality brings out there true character, and expresses who they are, without it everyone would be the same boring person. Everyone’s personality is unique, like mine. My personality shows greatly and reflects on what I’ve been through throughout my life. The things that have happened to me make my personality stand out to become what I am today. My parents going through a divorce, my Mom’s new boyfriend and step daughter becoming a part in the family, accepting more people into the family, family issues, the people I’ve met, the people I’ve dated, my friends, teachers, neighbors, all the schools I’ve been through, and trying to take every obstacle life throws at me, have all made me, me and framed my personality. With this in mind, I am mostly described as down to earth, good sense of humor, friendly, understanding, loyal, sometimes very opinionated, hard working, well mannered, jealous at some times, persistent, I always listen when people have to talk, I can be gullible at times too, I usually put everyone ahead of myself, sensitive, adventurous, affectionate, and many more. All these traits resonate on my experiences that have happened in my life, to make me become me. Even though at one time or another I have felt like giving up and that nothing will ever go right, at the most unexpected times things turned out better than I ever expected. I never gave up I figured out how to make it through the struggles. If everyone wasn’t a first rate version of themselves and they were a 2nd rate version of themselves this world would be nothing, everyone would be the same. I have figured out that I am unique from everyone else, that I am me, myself and I, no one else. As my parents once told me, “Don’t be anyone that you don’t want to be.”

Influences on my life? There are too many to even name. My family, friends, parents’, teachers, and neighbors have all had an impact on my life. With each person has a separate story, my mom for example, she is unable to work because she has to take care of the house, and has health issues (that run in the family). These things prevent her from having a fulfilled life, due to her being unable to work and the economy in a recession last I heard, makes me want to improve everything that I do. I want to be able to make something of myself, get a college degree and live life to the fullest. With being forty-five years old she has wisdom, she teaches me life lessons and things that I will need to figure out and go through later on in life basically giving me a heads up to what is next. My mom had been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, which runs heavily in the family, it was shocking cause for months and months she had violent mood swings and was always crabby and was sick all the time. When they finally found out what was wrong with her many tests later, we all knew this was going to be a difficult change, but for me it was going to be the hardest. I had to do everything while she was gone for a week in the hospital so they could get her all sorted out and better, and when she was I still had to take charge. This put the most strain on me because u had to take time out of my day and my time to get ready for school, do my homework, and go out and be with friends, I had to stay home help my sisters with their homework, make dinner, help my mom, and make sure everything was done how it was supposed to be done. I felt as if I was the mom and everything was my responsibility. Then a few years later she had been diagnosed with diabetes (which also runs in the family). All the things that she has been diagnosed with had taken a huge toll on my life. Due to the fact she has diabetes I have to watch what I eat, how active I am, and my daily activities, now with Bipolar disorder I just have to hope and pray I don’t get it. Now my dad on the other hand, he is a mechanic, he works side jobs, restores old muscle cars, pays the bills for the necessities, and is still out of work at the moment. One day just sitting at home right after I got up around noon I got a call from my grandma saying, “Your dad is in the hospital, he’s had an accident at work.” Then told me she needed to talk to my mom. This was a huge surprise to me and when I heard what had happened I started crying. My Dad’s friend Britta came to my house got me and my sister and took us to the hospital to go see my Dad. Hospitals always have that very sad gloomy feeling and knowing my dad was in there made it worse. Each minute in there it was hard not to cry, I hate seeing either one of my parents hurt, he looked so tired and sad, and the sad thing was is I couldn’t even do anything about it. Although he has taught me that no matter what life throws at someone, they have to find strength to keep going. Being out of work since last July from a fork-lift in the foot he has kept moving forward no matter the difficulties. He has also taught me that everyone has to earn what they want, not everything is going to be handed to someone no matter how much they need it. There is more but those two have influenced me the most, without them I would not have succeeded in school to strive for what I want.

Goals set standards for me in almost everything I do, without them I probably wouldn’t get there. My personality, what I like to do and my influences have all influenced my goals and how to achieve them no matter the difficulties. One of my goals is to go to Moraine Valley Community College (MVCC) and graduate with a degree in photography, my second goal is to go to College of DuPage and get a degree in meteorology (while being able to storm chase). The main two general goals of mine are to make it far enough to get into meteorology as well, the specific ones are to graduate Moraine Valley with my degree in Photography. Hardships make this more difficult to accomplish each day, such as home, finishing high school, finding time for a job, fishing and student helpers, the cost of school, and trying to face the new challenges of becoming an adult. With no money there is no way for pay for college except for FASFA or students loans. FASFA you get free money to go to school and don’t have to pay the government back, while student loans, people end up paying them the rest of their lives and I don’t want to be one of those people. Money is hard to come by, cause jobs are low, the economy is horrible, and the percentage of people that are out of work are 9.5% creating problems for the younger generations to get jobs and learn to fend for themselves. When I was four or five I remember sitting in the living room with my dad and this random movie comes on named Twister, watching it it fascinated me on how all these people want to do this job, especially a woman. Nowadays many women do not enjoy as you could say a “manly” sort of job, especially in this field. It inspired me to become a storm chaser and a meteorologist and be different from everyone else and pursue the job that I wanted to do most. I love anything to do with weather, I go outside in the middle of thunderstorms and watch them, I video tape and photograph them as best as I can, which this is where my photography career falls into play. Weather has always been the one subject that interested me, the way a tornado forms or how lightning is created, what makes thunderstorms, and just everything about this subject fascinates me. In all of my classes I am usually the one that excels when it comes to weather especially the tornado topic due to reading about them and studying and learning as much as I can. Now photography I took my junior year, with Mrs. Wargin was the best semester I had in high school. She taught me everything there was to know, the projects were fun and interesting to do, I loved developing my own film, and copying the photographs onto photo paper. In that class I used an old 35mm camera, and I prefer those over digital, but then again they are more expensive, but black and white bring out the beauty and everything and this is the major I want to get into. Throughout this I’ve learned to live with what I have, happy or not, I have to make the best of what I can, and when there is an opportunity take it.

Out of all the things that I have talked about it shapes who I am and what has made me, me, everyone is going through hard times at the moment some more than others, but my story is special and unique from others otherwise I wouldn’t be me. Hardships bring out the best in me because they reflect my true personality, people that influence me and made it possible for me to find out how to achieve my goals and find out what I really want to do in the future, with these I’ve learned how to be more mature, responsible and most of all find myself. I’ve learned that nothing is ever going to get handed to you in life, if someone wants something they have to fight for it in order to receive, and make the best of what they and can things will always get better. My story is unique form others because it has made me more mature than most people my age, granted I have moments where I may not act like it only because there is only so much time before I become an adult and have less time for joking around, maturity is one of the things many people lack because they get everything they want and they don’t know what it’s like till they actually go through it. Many people judge people and become the immature people they are now because they lack experience in the real world, after facing some of the things I’ve faced being mature is the best thing someone can do. I am one of those people that no matter how much I have on my mind I am always there to listen rather than shove people away, I trust few but help everyone I can. I am myself and that’s all I can ever ask to be.