I would like to thank...and blame, all the people who have made me who I am!

I don’t believe I have anyone to blame for who I am because even my faults are things that make me the person I am thankful to be. If I could, I would thank my high school youth leader for showing me the full picture of Christianity and not cutting out the things people don’t want to hear. She showed me who God was and was someone who led me to find my own faithful path.
In only the past three years, the people who I can thank for making me who I am today are numerous. The individuals involved in our campus’s Town and Gown organization who believed in me enough to give me a scholarship two years in a row deserve a huge thanks; Claudia Ingram who pushed for me to speak up in class and made me realize that my opinions matter; Debbie White who is my boss in Alumni Relations, but more importantly, is my mother away from home. She always knows when something is wrong without me even saying a word. I would like to thank Marilyn Engstrom for helping me find a major that I love and teaching me to “question everything.”
Lastly, there are the people in my family who have made me who I am. I would like to thank my brother Josh and my sister-in-law Veronica for truly showing me that family is everything. They have been there for me in the past and I know that they will be there for me in the future. I would also thank my mother for understanding me in a way that no other person does. I would like to thank her for never making me feel poorly for getting a C in a class or on a test when she knew I was trying my hardest. She accepts me for who I am and who I am not and she lets me know that I make her proud just being myself. Finally, I would like to thank my father. He passed away three years ago, but I take after him in so many ways. Not only do I resemble him through my physical features, I have the same optimistic personality, (for the most part), that he had. I am also easy going and I love to laugh. My father was a big kid and would do anything to get a laugh. He would also do anything for me and my sister. He would stay up all night helping us with school assignments and projects. When we had pages and pages of reading to do and were too tired to keep going, he would read aloud to us in bed. When we were young he would spend $20 trying to grab a bear from a claw machine in a restaraunt as we waited to be seated, just to make my sister and I smile. Even when money was tight, he always made sure we had enough money to go to a movie together…and enough money for popcorn. It was impossible to embarrass him, but he sure loved embarrassing other people (like my sister, brother and myself). Some of these things I have inherited from him; others are just good memories, but these memories are what help me get through every day that he is not around and they have become a part of me. I sometimes question whether the similarities I find between my father and myself are simply me being like him in a subconscious way, or if it is me trying to be like him because I love who he was and this helps me keep him alive.

All of the above people showed me compassion and love when they were willing to put their faith in me. Their positive influence on me has motivated me to try and be a positive influence on as many people as I can, and sometimes this influence is just smiling at someone when they pass by. The individuals discussed above have also contributed to my social and personal identities. John P. Hewitt writes, “People develop a sense of themselves as whole beings (integration) acting purposefully and effectively in their social world (continuity) by developing forms of identity that transcend the particular situation” (2007, 102). These forms of identity that Hewitt speaks of are social and personal identity. All of the above contribute to my life story (Hewitt 2007, 103); these people have made me think about my future and have challenged me to work hard so to succeed on levels I did not know were possible for myself. Because, in my years at Redlands, I have been integrated into a lifestyle of success (academically and in extracurricular activities), I continue to hold myself to higher expectations that transcend my life as a college student.