Coming of Age 3: Receiving my Driver's License

Throughout most of our adolescent lives, we rely almost entirely on our parents for food, money, and transportation. Therefore, a major moment in any adolescents’ life is to receive his or her driver’s license. It gives them a much greater amount of freedom than they had previously ever experienced.

After badly failing the first test, I thought that I might never be able to free myself from the restraints of not having a license. If I failed another, I would have to wait another 6 months before I would be allowed to try again. Aware of this fact, I decided to focus myself to doing what I had to in order to prepare. After a little time spent preparing and some luck, I was finally able to pass the test and receive a driver’s license.

Receiving a license changed many things for myself. With the license came a whole new set of responsibilities. Because of our large family (seven kids), my parents were constantly busy and not always available to drive or pick me up from places. While my dad would stay at work from about seven in the morning to about 8 at night, my mom had the primary responsibility of transportation.  Taking kids to school, friend’s houses, and soccer practice were all a part of her daily routine. Although my mother did a superhuman job in taking care of us all, she did not always have the time to provide us with a ride.  Now that I had a driver’s license, it did not only mean that I could now drive myself around, but I would also have an added capability to assist my parents in their driving obligations. While many young male drivers are sometimes reckless, because of my duty to my siblings made me view driving as a huge privilege and responsibility because their safety was in my hands. Additionally, now that I had a license, I would not have to be picked up or dropped off from friend’s houses. This meant that I could basically come and go as I pleased. I was responsible for my own curfew and decisions I made. Because of my new freedom my parents had to trust me to make wise decision. In the end, this helped me build trust with my parents through my maturity and integrity.

In conclusion, receiving a driver’s license was a coming of age for me because it opened up a new world of possibility. It was how I decided to handle and use the freedom that my license gave me that built not only trust and confidence with my parents but also maturity for myself.

Coming of Age 2: The Great Scare

It was my senior year of high school and the end of the first semester was quickly approaching. At the same time, the State Cross-Country Championship was coming up in a week. I was the team captain and we had high hopes that year. The four other runners and I that would be representing our school were all extremely talented and we though we had a serious shot at winning for the first time in school history. However, there was a problem. While we had been preparing for this meet for the past 3 months, I was at the time going to be ineligible to go because I was failing my English class.

I could not believe how stupid I was. The whole semester I had been slacking in this class — showing up late, not completing assignments on time, and disregarding the assigned readings. I could have easily been making an ‘A’ but my laziness had actually caused my grade to drop below a 70, the required grade for passing. UIL rules prevented me from running if I could not raise my grade. When my coach found out, he was beyond furious. This was a guy who I had been coached by for the past four years and we had developed a really close relationship. Over the past four years, he had always loved the effort that I put in and my hard work ethic. However, when he found out that I would be ineligible to run, I had never seen him so disappointed and furious. I was letting my whole team down. The way cross-country races work is that you send 7 runners to race, the top 5 scores for your team count. Add the total scores (quantified by the place your finish) and the team with the lowest score wins. Since there was a big drop off between our 5^th and our 6^th fastest, even loosing one runner could destroy our chances at winning. I was not only letting down my coach and myself, I was letting down my entire team. I had to do something.

In the week leading up to semester’s end, I had to find a way to raise my cumulative grade over ten points. That meant that I not only had to ace the midterm, but needed to complete a multitude of missed homework assignments to try and salvage any points I could. After taking the mid-term, all I could do is, sit, wait and hope that I got a high enough grade. I have never been so nervous about a test. I could not believe that I had let it get to this point. As I logged on and checked my grades, I promised myself that I would never let something like that happen again. Thankfully, I was able to make a good enough grade on the mid-term to raise my semester average above passing. I grew up that day and developed a much greater understanding of the importance of keeping up with my work.

Coming of Age 1: The Move

In third grade, I was forced to move from my home in Columbus, Ohio to Dallas, Texas. While Dallas is a great city, it was an extremely tough transition for me. I had to learn to adapt to a new school and make all new friends. In my first year, I did not do well in either of those categories.

In my first year, it seemed like just by being the new kid, I was almost unanimously disliked.  Social circles had already been established and the small elementary school it seemed to adhere to strict social hierarchies where I was close to the bottom. Because of this, the friends that I did have were not always the best influences. These were kids who also had been somewhat rejected by the third grade social groups and we seemed to form a dysfunctional friend group of misfits. In my first year at Hyer Elementary, I went to the principle’s office on at least four separate occasions. Needless to say, I was not leaving a good first impression. While my friends were not necessarily helping me to fit in at the school, I am still greatly thankful to them.

During these first few years in Ohio, it was the only time in my life I have ever truly felt like an outcast. Not having many friends, while it was tough, greatly helped me to realize who I was and what kind of person I wanted to be. I had to decide for myself how I was going to act and live, rather than being influenced by my friend group. My family, having 7 kids, was all going through a relatively difficult time. These first few years of transition I think really strengthened our bond as a family. We had to rely on each other because none of us had any close friends we could talk to for a while.

Even though they were a difficult few years, I am thankful that I experienced this. It taught me about who I was and strengthened my character. Additionally, because we had to rely on each other for help and advice, the first few years in Texas were able to strengthen our family’s bond as a whole. I think that I really grew up in these first couple years. My life in Texas did get consistently better and I have sincerely enjoyed and loved my time here. Now I have hundreds of friends and people I can talk to but I will still never forget my first few difficult years there.

Learning Experience 4: Snow

Living in Texas, I really don't have much experience with cold weather. It is somewhat of an anomaly to me. Can someone please tell me what all this frozen white powder is? Where does it come from? Why is it here? These are questions that may never be answered. When I woke up and stepped out on my balcony this morning I was thoroughly confused. What was this strange substance all around me and where did it come from? To try and answer some of these questions I decided to conduct a few experiments. First, I quickly realized that the surface of the ground in some areas was extremely slippery. My boots provided me with little to no traction and I fell multiple times.  As the hours passed by, I became nervous about the possibility that whatever this stuff was might never go away. After consulting with a few friends, we decided it was time that we got to the bottom of this mystery. I first called my mom in Dallas to see if she knew anything. She told me that the white powder is something called ‘snow’. She said that she didn’t know exactly where it comes from or why but that it had something to do with Christmas and the North Pole.

I wondered… what was the correlation between Christmas, Fort Worth, finals week, and the North Pole?  Why did school get cancelled and all of this ‘snow’ suddenly appear? Then it hit me.  Why is it that right before Christmas time, TCU’s campus mysteriously closes even in the wake of finals week? Is it possible that maybe Chancellor Boschini is no Chancellor at all — Maybe, just maybe, Chancellor Boschini is in fact Saint Nicholas himself. It would explain the faculty’s disappearance. It would explain why this strange and mysterious substance from the North Pole has suddenly appeared in Fort Worth.  I really think that I might be on to one of the greatest discoveries of all time. I definitely learned a lot today about the world and TCU. You keep doing your thing Chancellor, or should I say… Santa?

Let me know what y’all think of this or if there could be any other possible explanations to these strange happenings in Fort Worth. I NEED ANSWERS!!!

Humor 2: Superiority Theory at its Finest

Earlier today, my friend and I were making our way through the treacherous icey terrain outside of the greek houses. We had just parked and were headed as quickly as possible for the warmth of the great indoors. However, just as we were almost there my friend accidentally dropped his phone and watched as it slowly started sliding down the slight hill towards an even steeper hill which finally led to the pond outside the Greek. My friend, Micheal Butler, then desperately followed after it, hoping to stop it before it was too late. As he reached his phone however, he could not get any sort of gripping, as the ice was just too slippery. He then proceeded to slowly slide down this slant towards the pond. Cursing loudly, he then frantically struggled to stop his momentum to no avail. He then continued to slide down the hill towards the frozen pond. Luckily for him he was able to grab onto a small patch of grass and stop his slippery decent. At this point, seeing that he is no longer in danger of falling into the water, start to laugh at him. At which point he starts to yell curse words at the world, causing me to laugh even harder. The situation did not end there however. Micheal then quickly realized that he would not be able to escape his icy prison because there was nowhere he could gain traction. I watched as he unsuccessfully tried to find a way to climb up. 

After laughing at his misery for a good 5 minutes, I thought it was about time that I tried to help out. I considered leaving him there a while but it was pretty cold so I wanted to go inside as soon as possible. Eventually, we ended up crafting a rope made from tying sweaters together. It was a pretty dangerous rescue mission but in the end we were able to pull it off. Once we pulled him out, he punched me in the chest for not helping him out sooner. I deserved it. We then both went inside as quickly as possible and had a good laugh about it.

I think that this situation perfectly illustrates superiority theory. I watched as an unfortunate series of events unfolded on my friend right before my eyes. To him it was a miserable experience but to me it was great entertainment. This discrepancy really shows how, in some instances, watching others struggle can cause laughter. I think that this may be in part because, as humans, we are constantly comparing ourselves. When we see someone who is going through a bad experience or struggling it makes us feel happy to not be in his or her position. Once I knew that he was in no real danger, the situation became comical.

Poll: Which clip is the funniest to you and why?

Hey guys, ok here are three separate video clips from the movie Napoleon Dynamite, in my opinion one of the greatest comedy films of all time. I’m taking a survey; please comment whichever one is your favorite and a comic theory it might be employing.

Learning Experience 3: Chinese Movie Night

I think that it is extremely important to allow yourself to go outside your comfort zone because I believe that the more you are outside of what your used to, the more you learn about yourself and realize how big the world is. This is a broad and generalizing statement but here’s a specific example of a time that I allowed myself to go outside of my comfort zone and not only enjoyed the experience but also learned something from it.

Last week, as part of our required curriculum, I attended Chinese Movie Night. There we met up with the native Chinese students here at Texas Christian University, ate a Chinese food dinner (which was actually delicious), and then watched a movie. The movie at first I wasn’t sure about because it was all in Chinese with English subtitles. However, as it progressed I became extremely interested. The movie was set during the stage in Chinese history directly after they had transformed into a democracy. I thought it was very odd because, in the documentary, when the teacher asked her students if any of them knew what democracy meant none of them had any idea. The idea was entirely foreign to them. The plot line of the movie followed a class of Chinese students as they, for the first time, held class elections for student monitor (a position which had previously always been selected by the teacher, much like how the Chinese government operated prior to the transition).  It was very interesting to see the various tactics employed by each student competing to win over the votes by their classmates and how seriously they took it. In fact, it was not just the students who took it extremely seriously, but even more so their parents. Their parents’ involvement with their lives seemed to be at almost an absurd extent. To me, this was very interesting because I could clearly see the impact that the one-child policy had on the parent-child relationships. Also, there were other things that stuck out to me, for example, there was one mom who was divorced and the child’s father was not there. The mom seemed to blame much of the child’s problems on the fact that he does not have a mom and a dad like “all the other children”. Here in America it is a lot different because divorce is relatively common, whereas in China, it is seem as dishonorable and divorce is much less common.

I found that this video opened my eyes to the many cultural differences that we don’t even realize exist. It was also interesting to me after learning a little about Chinese history and culture; things like the one-child policy that have a big impact on the way people there live. I hope to keep allowing myself to experience new things and learn more about people, cultures, and belief systems that are different from my own. In this way, through learning about others, I think we can subsequently learn much about ourselves.