As much as I hate to admit it, my family has had a huge influence on the person I am today. I have pretty much become the adult they wanted me to become. My brother and I were both raised with the belief that happiness is important, but academic and career successes are pretty dang close. I succeeded, he did not. My brother and I have never been close, or even on comfortable speaking terms. A lack of family connectedness caused me to develop close friendships to fill the gap. I now love meeting new people and making friends at unexpected times, and consider some of my oldest friends to be my family. My parents were always strong believers in talking to little kids as if they could communicate on the same level as adults. They let me ramble on about whatever random tangents and responded with interest. I grew up hearing and telling long, exciting stories about average days in an average middle class family in Minnesota. Anything small event could be turned into a loud adventure for the whole family. Besides talking, my mother was adamant about me and my brother becoming good readers. I hated my first grade teacher (she bullied and ostracized me in school) so I hated reading. My mom found that completely unacceptable. She forced me day after day to painstakingly go through picture books until I began to read on my own. I hated it, fighting every day to be able to quit. Eventually, she won.
My parents’ encouragement caused me to develop a love for language that has stuck with me my whole life. I’m on my way to getting a Communication studies major with a possible minor in theater. I’ve been writing short stories since I was in grade school and I still read in my spare time. My environment growing up has shaped a lot of my personality and habits. I connect with people more easily because my family was not very close, which will be extremely important for my career, whatever it may be. I’m not sure if I would still be as interested in language and communication had I not been encouraged to speak so much as a child.
I wrote my blog post about family, as well, so I found this very interesting! My parents also forced me to talk when I was little, and now it's hard to get me to stop. I also hated reading, but my parents made me keep trying until I fell in love with it. I was contemplating a Communications major but decided to go the business route with Marketing and HR, two fields that require a lot of communication. I am definitely a firm believer that parents and family play a huge role in who we become.
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