Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

Because I Said So

“BEEP.. BEEP.. BEEP.. BEEP,” time for class again, so says the alarm at least. “Shut that off Nick!! Wake me up when you get back, I’m not goin’ today.”

“Nah dude! You’re not missing class again. I’m up, you can get up” my roommate yells from the bathroom of our suite. So I roll out of bed, snooze the alarm, lie down on the couch and tune into Sportscenter. All of this is a very familiar morning ritual for myself.

“Get up dude!” Now Nick’s in the room, and he is not happy. I know I am in trouble if I do not get ready for class. “How do you sleep so much?” he asks.

“I need a butt,” my reply roughly escapes my mouth. It is obvious that I am not a morning person, and a cigarette is usually my incentive for leaving our dormitory on most days. Nick on the other hand is the total opposite; where I could sleep through a tornado, he wakes up at the drop of a pin. The two of us are usually right on the same page though. We both like all of the same things and are always together on campus, whether it is eating or playing basketball. I find it amazing how two people, who are so similar, can be so individual when it comes to certain things. But the day has begun nonetheless and we have a full agenda to complete. Nick wants to walk to class but he knows that the only walking we will be doing is to the bus stop.

Sleeping late is just one aspect of my identity. Identity is a definition of self that we cannot create, but rather we establish based on our beliefs, morals, interests, and past experiences. For me, this means that I am an athletic, hardworking, persistent, and loving individual. All throughout growing up my mother enforced strict rules that have gone on to mold the framework for my identity. Mind my manners, respect my elders, and go to college. I thought that if I did these three things everything in life would turn out hunky-dory. Oh boy was I wrong; you need to do so much more than this! My identity continued to reveal itself with most of my childhood experiences.

When I was five years old I sat on a Greyhound Bus headed for Florida for eighteen hours straight. I was very ready for a vacation, only this vacation was promised to be permanent. We were leaving everything I knew in Massachusetts, and basically all I knew in general, and starting over in the South. It was in Florida however that I gained interest in baseball; a sport I played throughout high school. My dad thought it would be a good situation for us, but I thought it was fishy. Indeed it was, and soon enough I would find myself on a plane back to Massachusetts.

When my father cheated on my mother and left us I was six years old and didn’t know what to think. We moved back up north and I saw my mom crying day in and day out. I realized I had to be older than six and do my best to help my mom out. This experience gave me an aspect of my identity that I will never allow myself to forget. That aspect is that I am a man and I have to take care of business; something my own father did not do. I am determined to have a family and give my son something I was never given by my father. Love and support through all of the situations in his life. Being fatherless for what are possibly the most important years of my life is one event that allowed me to establish part of my identity. This however does not complete it by any means.

Another factor that made me who I am is my strong Christian faith. I have been going to church since before I can remember and it is an intricate part of my identity. I began to attend church with my mother and father when I was very young. After he left, my mom stopped going because she was too busy or too tired depending on the particular Sunday. Around my tenth birthday though I started to attend church with some of my friends because I felt God needed to be a part of my life. I joined the choir and attended services religiously (no pun intended.) My mom was happy, and I believe she was proud of me. There were usually one or two parents who chaperoned our trip to mass on Sundays and my mom became a part of that as much as she could. Christ drew my mother and me together closer than my father or any other man could have.

So what’s the difference? What sets my identity apart from everyone else? I made my identity, and so does everyone else but no one will ever be able to recreate me. People may have similar beliefs and morals and they may have gone through some of the same things I have, but no other person in this world is ME. The best part of identity is that it always has the ability to change if we choose to change it. For me however it is more of a struggle to maintain what I have made of my identity so far. I still have morals to develop, people to meet, and great things to accomplish but I need to work off of the foundation that I’ve already created.

The biggest factor that I have working for me right now is that I’m young and I still have the ability to make my identity as strong as I want it to be. So far I have followed my mother’s strict rules of respect, politeness, and going to college, but I am not done making an identity. In order to completely define who I am I feel like I need to make up for my father’s faults. I want to give my mother something to be proud of in the man in her life. For the past thirteen years this man has been me. I want to have a family and transfer all of the neglect my father had towards me into love for my children. I want to teach them how to be genuine adults. I want to introduce them to the ways of my lord Jesus Christ and with his help teach them to love and respect all men. I want to continue to establish my identity until it is complete and I have done all I wanted to do in this world and then I will pass that along to future generations who may have experienced the same things as me.

Overall, I sleep a little late for class and I miss a few as well. That does not determine my identity though; everything else does. From the bad taste that my dad left in my mouth when he left, to me being accepted to college and trying to better myself as an individual to reciprocate what my mother has done for me, my identity is ever-growing and becoming more and more apparent everyday. I am Michael Brady because I said so.