Introduction
Life is a journey, an experience, an opportunity. It might not always make sense, but it sure has a way of working things out. My life, as it were, began in April 1996 in the city of Richmond, Virginia. Although born in the Old Dominion state, I was raised in sunny southwest Florida for the majority of my life. I have the privilege of calling the town of Lehigh Acres my home. My mother, father, sister, and brother live together in our little house on a dead-end street. If that sounds secluded, it is worth noting that I only lived about a ten-minute walk away from my high school (close enough to hear the sounds and cheers of Friday night football games as a young child). It was an interesting town and …show more content…
As a high school student, most people would describe me as the highly motivated, overachieving perfectionist. I was very close to a small group of friends that did everything together. Music was a great passion of mine and I found fellowship in several of the school bands. I also was a cadet in the Junior ROTC program and it was in that classroom that I found myself after school most days. Not much has changed from high school until now regarding my identity. I still consider myself a perfectionist, even if it is not good for my health sometimes, and I appreciate my small group of friends and take every opportunity to enhance my leadership skills. Through experiencing an identity crisis that will be described in the next section, I am able to know who I am and what my values are. Although not fully an adult, I am a member of the Army profession now and I can carry myself with the knowledge that I am embracing the lifestyle of service that came to define who I …show more content…
I no longer blindly accepted who I was and this crisis caused the anxiety that I mentioned in the previous section. In an effort to discover who I was, I was able to enter into moratorium where I tested different values and ways of living; ultimately, I decided on a core of values to live by and they turned out to be the same values that I held before I began asking myself who I was. For example, I made the commitment to try to live with honor and respect and to make the right choices even if it was difficult or unpopular. These values formed a key part of my identity; by reaching identity achievement, I was able to make the decision on who I was for