So I bet you’re wondering what this is all about. Well, for Personal Essay, we have to write papers about, well, ourselves. In our style, by the end of this class, we have to write a paper; “Who am I?” And it’s more than just “19 year old bi-racial female,” if you couldn’t tell :3 In any event, I decided to take the papers I write in the class and put them up here. This is my first assignment in the class (turned it in today). A one page auto-biography (it wasn’t exactly one page, ahaha). Enjoy:
Well, where do I start, besides the painfully obvious? The name’s Regina Ann Baker, better known as Gina, G, Shorty, G Bakes, and several hundred other nicknames that I can’t remember and don’t feel like listing anyway. Born in the Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn, NY, 10:02am, November 21st, 1989. Weighed in at 7 lbs 12 oz., 21 cm long (because that actually matters in life for some stupid reason). I’m an arrogant, confident, bitchy nice girl with no self-esteem whatsoever. A procrastinating perfectionist (ironically; I’m a woman of many contradictions), and I’m surprised I haven’t given myself a stroke because it’s really that bad. I have a tendency to over-think things and I’m too serious for my health. I’m not all bad parts, I suppose. I have quite the sense of humor, and while I’ve never been tested for it, I’ve been told that I might be gifted in a few of the seven (or is it eight now?) intelligences. Plus I’m ridiculously musical and a sports freak; how much better can you get?
Me and my growing-up-to-be-an-eventual-6-person family lived in a 2-person apartment just around the corner from Brooklyn College, until I was around 8. Blame it on the kid who was set on fire for not trying crack down the street (this actually did happen too, no joke), but my parents decided that it was probably best for us to leave and move to a better neighborhood. So, we purposefully got ourselves evicted, and moved briefly to Philadelphia to stay with Great Aunt Doris, Aunt Karen and her three kids in a tiny 2 person row house (for the non-math majors, that’s 10 people, 11 when Dad came on weekends, since he was still working in Manhattan at the time). The following six months after that is relatively uneventful, so I’ll skip ahead to the part where we move to the house we currently reside in, up in Sidney, NY. A house that almost but not quite fits us all, but it’s certainly a lot better than that tiny apartment in the city.
At this point, I guess one would expect me to say “life has gotten much better now that we’re up here!” Well, ironically, the opposite happened, and no, it’s not because the town I live in is boring as hell, though it is boring as hell. A lot of things changed. Firstly, our finances changed; my dad went from making 60k a year to a fraction of that. Secondly, my dad changed. I’m not entirely sure how his little, screwed up head works, but he ended up clinically depressed. And in result, everything else has all gone down hill since then. I’m not going to get into the nitty and gritty right now, not to mention that I don’t particularly like pity. I find it highly annoying, just like stupid people.
I was re-enrolled into the public school system in 8th grade (prior to that, I had been pulled out of 2nd grade to be home-schooled by my mother), fumbling along and trying to learn how to have a social life. Needless to say, the first couple of years were bad. It got a little better going through high school, to a very slight degree. I can’t say the drama got any better. If anything, it was about 200 times worse. Unfortunately for me, I made it a habit to make friends with people who would take advantage of my unwavering loyalty, and walk all over me (not all of them, just a lot of them). And it was like that for a very long time. Soccer and chorus, both of which I was heavily involved in during those four years of Hell School, plus a small and select group of friends probably was what kept me from shooting my brains out. I don’t kid you when I say I went through a lot back then.
Senior year was when I finally started gaining my confidence. I applied to several different schools, getting into my top choice. I came in as a P.E. major, thinking I wanted to be a gym teacher. As time went on, however, and I’m not entirely sure how I got myself there, but I realized that my major interest was in sports medicine. I love sports medicine you see, it’s like my calling, and so now I’ve been going through the torturously slow process of switching into athletic training. I eventually want to go to med school and come out an orthopedic (doctor or surgeon, not sure which). I want to be a specialist that caters to athletes, since that’s the part of sports medicine that I really like the most.
One of the biggest contributors to my new-found confidence and just a healthier self-image was going to college. And I don’t even know what it was about it that matured me. Perhaps it was having to take care of myself, more or less with out the help of my mom or dad; maybe it was the fact that after I started going to college, the relationship between my Dad and I started to deteriorate more. Maybe it was the realization that I really wasn’t such a loser, that I was just as smart and capable as the next guy, some times more so, and that I was competent enough to lead an independent life. Starting my third year here, I think I can safely say that I’m glad I managed to get myself here, even though I have the extra year here and then basically the rest of my life in med school. Hopefully in the end it will all be worth it.
Sep 01 2009
It hurt like a bitch, and that was the second time in my life I was told that I have tough skin (I must be a crocodile or s… actually a cat’s skin is tougher than that of a human’s :3). A friend (crush) of mine and I have made plans to hang out sometime this week, which is totally awesome! Oh, and I don’t know if you remember me talking about the popular kids back in high school. Christine Mirabito, Teresa’s older sister and popular student, invited me to have dinner tomorrow, so I’m looking forward to that too.