Make Me Who I Am

We all have a role to play in society, and those roles are very distinctive. I had to learn that the roles that we play change with each person we encounter, and that role is going to change throughout my life.

I had my son at a young age, so I was forced to grow up pretty quick. I was born in the Bronx, and moved to Miami when I was 1 and grew up there to around the age of 17. Living in suburbs with my mother remarrying, my step father was a huge influence in my life. He was a Muslim, and taught me everything about being an honorable man. My mother was a Legal Secretary, and all she asked was that I get passing grades, so early on, that's all I strived for, just enough to pass. Not understanding that this mentality would come back to haunt me later. When I was 17 I went through the devastation of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. It was one of the most terrifying experiences I had ever been through in my life, and I think in kind of traumatized me. After the devastation, I had to get out of Miami, so as soon as the airports were accessible, I was on the first flight out of there.  Moving from Miami, sort of thrust me into finding what NYC was all about really quick. Even though, I had been traveling back and forth every other summer, the fact that I wasn’t a kid anymore was essentially something that I needed to come to grips with. I started attending high school immediately after moving to NY. Still carrying on that just enough to get by attitude, I eventually dropped out feeling that it was more important for me to make money than getting an education.

Then in 2001, the 911 attacks occurred. Again, this was another one of those catastrophic events that will either make you or break you. I lost a family member and a couple of friends to those terror attacks. Both the hurricane and 911 events truly played a part in the person I am today. It kind of makes you tough as nails. Both events made me realize that for the first time it didn’t matter what ethnicity you were or how much power you had or your status or social class, because it just didn’t matter. This observation blew my mind because with devastations such as this everyone is forced to be a part of one unified circle whether you want to or not.

Nevertheless, working a minimum wage jobs and living check to check just wasn’t the life for me, and how so many minorities get caught up, a need for fast money became my motivation. I thought I had the power structure my life and also believed I could get by without an education. Eventually I started selling drugs and found myself behind bars. I was living my life in a state of anomie, and that’s dangerous way to live when have to walk around looking over your shoulder, wondering when the police might be knocking my door.

After doing some self evaluation and soul searching I decided I had to make some changes in my life and this is when school came into play. Once released from jail, I immediately signed up to get my GED, and this was a turning point in my life, because up to this point, I rarely finished anything in my life and school was one of those things that I promised myself I would finish. So I passed the test and my next goal was to enroll into college and to find my own expertise or division of labor. School came easy to me because I always love to learn but this was learning in an adult environment, and to me, was just different. It’s like Peter Berger wrote in his text, Invitation to Sociology, “Any intellectual activity derives excitement from the moment it becomes a trail of discovery.” For me, every day I attend class, is a new moment of discovery for me.

One o my favorite lines from the passage was, “People who like to avoid shocking discoveries, who prefer to believe that society is just what they were taught in Sunday school, should stay away from sociology.” My best example of that statement is like a person complaining about politicians and how we need change, then tell you he doesn’t vote. That’s the person who needs to stay away from sociology.