So I had to do a reflective piece for one of the courses I am taking prior to the official start of school. The course, PCAP (or Personal Career Assessment Program) is about exploring what truly makes you tick so you can then use it as a guide post for school and creating that perfect career. Here is my entry for one particular assignement.
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So I am supposed to write an abbreviated version of my history that is more personal than a resume or vita. Interesting! Well, ok! This story will be cursory, as my story is way more complicated and painful than I am willing to share in this assignment.
It’s coincidental, but I was talking with my BF (boyfriend) the other week about the fact that I do not have any memory of my parents being married and together, though I know they were until I was 4 years old and I have one, exactly one, memory from that period (they were not in it, just me sitting in a room in front of a floor-to-ceiling window on a cloudy day looking at a playground beneath our apartment building). Anyway, so my memories begin after they’ve both separated.
My mother had my brother and me for a brief period, about a year or so, and moved us to another state. It was very evident, even then, that she was not ready to be a mother. (I was reminded later throughout the years, that she really never wanted to be one). Anyway, the self-fulfilling prophecy resulted in a controversy, to say the least, which stripped her of her parental rights, thus placing my brother and me in the care of my father. I am so thankful that he decided to stick it out and raise us, when doing so was totally outside of cultural norms (my father is Nigerian).
So this aspect of my life story (plus the MANY experiences since then) has been the framework for the other areas in my life – friends, strangers, school, and work. There are other buckets, but for the purpose of this exercise, I am just focusing on these.
School: I had always felt awkward or out of place in some sort of way growing up, but school and academics was always the place where I felt truly comfortable to be myself. Also, hyper-focusing on school helped me to block out the negative events in my life until I was ready to digest and develop a strategy to deal with them. Besides, it was easier for my dad and I to communicate via the language of school then to talk about the hard subjects and events / limelight that our family had been thrust into because of my mom. What I have noticed recently is that schooling when you are younger is totally different then schooling when you much older, the focus shifts from wholly technical to a mix of technical and social, with social outweighing the technical as you progress through your education. This is truly a paradigm shift for me because the technical aspects of it made it so much easier to deal with the fact that I felt like a social outcast – my family did not quite fit the norms, a man from foreign land raising his children as a single parent, a household income sandwiched us between the residents of the two neighborhoods that bordered our apartment complex, a seriousness (even at an extremely young age) about the social ills gripping my community and the world juxtaposed against a quirkiness (some said innocence) that screamed my naiveté. Although I had addressed the social element of schooling, it always opened the door to feeling pressed to answering the questions of why my situation was the way it was, so focusing on the technical aspects of school was a hell of a lot easier than dealing with the social component. Also, once in high school, I never had to really deal with the social component outside of school hours because I was always working – it was my way of contributing to the household income to alleviate some of the financial burden and fulfilling my goal of attaining complete financial independence.
Strangers / Friends: These two share a category because they are invariably connected. My mom used to have a phrase that she would say over and over again – “If your own mother can screw you over royally, think what someone else could do.” (This is a phrase she said repeatedly to me from the age of 5 through 18). Though I used to disagree wholeheartedly with those words, they held power and the lesson was ingrained. When I am attached to something, I am deeply committed, open, and there for the long haul. As such, I befriend people rather slowly. It all goes back to me not wanting to divulge too much about what has shaped me and feeling like there are few things/occurrences in my life with which others can relate.
Work: My dad took me to his job many times when I was young. He was completely active in organizations like the PTA, neighborhood and tenants associations, and the like; however, rarely did those spheres overlap with his social or home spheres. I did not realize then how much that influenced how I thought about work. I have always believed that work and home should be separate and never intermingled. For a while, I did not realize that that was some of the main reasons I felt disconnected from my school (which since 12th grade, I’ve viewed school as a job) and jobs. Again, this is something I recognize and am working to change, but doing so is a total paradigm shift.
Champion Mentality: If I have to look back at a theme that continues to recur in my life, it is the penchant I have for saving something or someone that others have written off. I am certain it is connected to the insights about me that I shared above. It was the case when I was young child having intensely emotional debates over the affects of poverty, locally and globally, and disparities in education and healthcare. It is a main reason why vehemently refused to go to a private school that would take me out of a community school – I felt that it would be a “slap in the face” to those in my community who did not have the same opportunity. Besides, I felt that I would ultimately be successful in life, regardless which path I took. (It was much later when I recognized the flaws in that logic and understood how much harm I could have truly done to my life’s trajectory…thankfully it all did work out!). Later in life, it was the reason why I left a corporate banking job to pursue education and nonprofit work (which has also been an enlightening experience). The list goes on, but the “champion” mentality has been my mentality for as long as I can remember and is rooted in the very vivid memories of those who championed me when they did not have to even after it felt like others had written me off.
This is a truly cursory look at a particular event in my life and its influence over successive events.
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