My name is Sam, and I was born in Nuevo Laredo Mexico on February 28th, 1988. My family comprises of a father a mother, a brother and two sisters. Due to civil unrest in our country when I was four, my family escaped illegally to the United States. The move from our little home town to the border but upon reaching the border, it was almost impossible. My family was among a group of other illegal immigrants and due to the squalid conditions in the lorry that carried almost 50 people, the reason why we did not die before reaching the States amazes me to this day. We set foot on American soil on September 3rd, 1993 under a constant threat of heat stroke from the hot desert, a myriad of diseases and border law enforcement officers and vigilante groups. My family and several others settled in a small town near the border in the state of New Mexico called Blanco. For the first time in several months, I had a sense of belonging. The little town of Blanco seemed to have a host of illegal immigrants, as such when I was home in our neighborhood, I felt like I was back in the old country. It seemed like everybody talked Mexican and ate Mexican food much more than food from the new world.
By the time I was in sixth grade, I had enrolled in a community school nearby; at this juncture the life started taking a turn for the worse. It is at this place that I experience first-hand racism. I had heard about it in television and my father had told me that I might experience it in school but somehow I did not expect it to happen to me. I had taken the initiative to learn all the English that I could and practiced it a lot with other boys in the neighborhood so as to master the accent and to be incorporated in the society. Over time, we got over the shock of racism with new mechanisms of coping.
We accepted the names the other kids gave us. We mocked ourselves so that they did not have anything else to hurl at as in the form of insults. By the times, the insults ended completely I was in eighth grade; my parents had undertaken a tremendous effort and secured me and the rest of my family legal citizenship. I was now an American and the theoretical sky was the limit. I knew early on in life that I wanted to become a lawyer. To my young mind, this seemed to be the only way that I could fight for the social injustice that I experienced when I came to America. Currently I am in Brown University studying Constitutional law, I am bound to graduate in two years and I am eager to get out and tackle the world on behalf of the “little people” who cannot fend for themselves.
The most resilient method of constructing a lifespan construct is using life story narrative. This is because it comes from memory, and the basis of the narrative has already happened. This makes the story consistent and chronological (Robert and Cavanaugh, 376).
Possible selves can be defined as a representation of our future selves. This is what we can be, what we are likely to become and what we are afraid of becoming (Robert and Cavanaugh, 376). In young people, it offers a way of seeing how stable their lives are and offers a way in which we can determine their personality. The youth is like to have multiple personality selves which compete among themselves therefore altering life construct (Robert and Cavanaugh, 376).
Works Cited
Kail, Robert V, and John C. Cavanaugh. Human Development: A Life-Span View. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013. Print.
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