it's college.
I grew up with a brother who never fit in. He struggled in school because rather than noticing how intelligent he was, his teachers focused on the fact that he couldn’t sit down and shut up. He struggled to find his place, to find a group of which he could be a part. Later on he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and ADHD, but these identifications didn’t help him. He represents the kind of diversity that is not identifiable by skin color or clothing style; he just didn’t fit in. He eventually fell in with the “stoners”, a group of people where all you had to do to fit in was smoke pot. This led to harder drugs and alcohol abuse, all before he was old enough to vote.
We grew up in a small town, in schools that are overwhelmingly white. There isn’t a gay student alliance at the high school, because no one comes out of the closet until after graduation for fear of being outcast. Everyone is a Christian, at least when they have to select a box on a form. Rebellion comes in the form of hair dye or a piercing, and even those are rare. Rather than integrate the students with learning or behavioral problems into the mainstream classes, they are put in isolated classrooms; in one case, the dilapidated basement of an intermediate school. In a community that starts out with everyone being so much the same, the price paid by those who cannot conform is high.
In this community as an adolescent, the pressure and need to have a group with which one can identify is a matter of survival. It was my brother against the world, and he lost. He killed himself when he was eighteen years old, after a lifetime of struggling to fit into a society that wouldn’t accept him for who he was.
It is because of Chris, my brother, that I pay attention to the struggles people have in society, and how society creates standards that drive our behavior. My interest in sociology and psychology began with my brother. Beyond wanting to simply understand this dynamic, I want to affect it. I want to study why people are driven to look a certain way, why alcoholism is socially acceptable in college, and why middle school students are so prone to bully one another.
My experience with diversity is not part of the common definition-different races, ethnicities, religions, sexualities-but about being different in a way that cannot be pinned down so easily. Among other things, Chris gave me this perspective and this drive to understand. It is this approach to the world that I bring to the _____ College community, and it is at _____ that I know I will grow to a higher level of awareness for the causes and potential resolution for the Chris’s I will help.
this basically stole my life for the past week or so. i hate writing about subjects i'm passionate about because i have so many ideas that they get blurred and i have a hard time organizing them. however, i'm satisfied.
tell me you love it.
We grew up in a small town, in schools that are overwhelmingly white. There isn’t a gay student alliance at the high school, because no one comes out of the closet until after graduation for fear of being outcast. Everyone is a Christian, at least when they have to select a box on a form. Rebellion comes in the form of hair dye or a piercing, and even those are rare. Rather than integrate the students with learning or behavioral problems into the mainstream classes, they are put in isolated classrooms; in one case, the dilapidated basement of an intermediate school. In a community that starts out with everyone being so much the same, the price paid by those who cannot conform is high.
In this community as an adolescent, the pressure and need to have a group with which one can identify is a matter of survival. It was my brother against the world, and he lost. He killed himself when he was eighteen years old, after a lifetime of struggling to fit into a society that wouldn’t accept him for who he was.
It is because of Chris, my brother, that I pay attention to the struggles people have in society, and how society creates standards that drive our behavior. My interest in sociology and psychology began with my brother. Beyond wanting to simply understand this dynamic, I want to affect it. I want to study why people are driven to look a certain way, why alcoholism is socially acceptable in college, and why middle school students are so prone to bully one another.
My experience with diversity is not part of the common definition-different races, ethnicities, religions, sexualities-but about being different in a way that cannot be pinned down so easily. Among other things, Chris gave me this perspective and this drive to understand. It is this approach to the world that I bring to the _____ College community, and it is at _____ that I know I will grow to a higher level of awareness for the causes and potential resolution for the Chris’s I will help.
this basically stole my life for the past week or so. i hate writing about subjects i'm passionate about because i have so many ideas that they get blurred and i have a hard time organizing them. however, i'm satisfied.
tell me you love it.