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Going off of a timeline base, I would say the first big moment in my life would have been when I was in 2nd grade. I went to the eye doctors with my mom thinking it was the greatest day because I got to skip school. After about 2 hours of testing and drops in my eye, the doctor finally concluded that I was born with a lazy eye and if we didn’t treat it soon, it would be permanent. I began to cry when they showed me the eye patch I had to wear, along with my nerdy little kid glasses over it. The next day I went to school wearing it I can just remember all the stares I got from my fellow classmates, even the teacher looked at me strangely. I had to wear that awful thing until my last month in 2nd grade. I believe that it truly shaped me to be the person I am today. I began to look at kids with glasses or casts as not strange, but as my friend. I thought to myself, “You should really be nice to everyone because you don’t know what everyone is going through.” It also gave me the tough exterior I have today by me not letting what those kids say to me hurt me, almost to laugh with them in a sense. Today I do the same as I did then. If I don’t want to wear make up to class, I’m not going to wear make up to class! It also can be a negative because I have a hard time expressing my feelings.

This is not exactly an event in my history but more generally spread over time. My dad is super hard on me and my brother, mostly in sports but also at home too. He taught me that it is never okay to cry and issues in my life don’t matter as much as adults. This might seem harsh to some but to me it makes sense. I rarely open up to people, even to the point where it gets so bottled up I take it out on my friends who did nothing wrong. My dad was my softball coach for the longest time, before he started focusing more on baseball with my brother, which I did not mind because my dad would yell about something after every game. I remember I hit two homeruns in one game and my yelled at me for not running the bases fast enough. He drove me to fear failure, which I still do today. I begin to hear other people’s accomplishments and think to myself, “Should I have numerous academic medals or should I have this amazing internship lined up for this summer? Am I not going to graduate with a job because I didn’t major in this? Will I still be successful in business even if I’m not in Carlson but major in econ in CLA?” I am so afraid to fail and its most due to my parents in general. I’m also afraid of my basement but who doesn’t sprint up the stairs after you shut the lights off down there?

My friend group lives no more than 5 houses down from each other and we are just as close today as we were in elementary school. We have been on vacations together, multiple day excursions, or even simply going to the movies once a week. This may seem like nothing monumental, but if you think about it, there are some kids out there that would kill to have one friend take them to a move or ride bikes together. I have experienced so much with these awesome group of girls and I believe that it has given me the social skills and opportunities to be the funny, crazy person I am today! Going off to college was a challenge at first because I felt so distance from them, even my life in general.