Elements of my identity would include my family, the city I grew up in, the sports I played, and my experiences in school. All of these things have led to me having the values, motivations, and goals that I have today. 

 

My family has been the biggest impact on who I am. My family is pretty big and we live in a really small house. To help you visualize it, I could vacuum my whole house without needing to unplug the vacuum from the outlet and moving it to a different location, and I shared my room with my older sister, my twin brother, and my younger brother. I’m not trying to complain about the situation at all though, because I have really grown to love it. My family is super close knit and we are super used to spending lots and lots of time together. My family is very loud, and sometimes I forget when I come home from college that I never need to set an alarm because I will be woken up by someone at at least 9am. This has in turn made me a very chatty and loud person myself, but I will say unlike the rest of my family I do not have it in me to wake up before 10am on the weekends. The connection I have with my family is something that means the most to me, and it is something that has especially become more important to me since moving to college. 

 

Since I come from the Bay Area, I am really into food. I feel really lucky that I was able to grow up in such a diverse place because I have been able to try and experience so many different cuisines and celebrate and learn about a lot of different cultures, as well as be more in touch with my own. I’m half filipino, but a lot of times I struggle to feel “filipino enough”. When my Lola and Lolo (grandparents) immigrated to America, they didn’t teach my dad to speak Tagalog because they wanted him to assimilate and since they moved to Michigan it's not really like my dad engaged in Filipino culture outside of his own home. My Lola and Lolo still live in Michigan so being without them is also part of the reason why I feel less knowledgeable about a lot of things. My mom and my dad both thought it was important for us to still know our heritage and my dad cooks a lot of Filipino dishes for dinner. 

 

Growing up, I was also severely behind grade level in my academics. My 2nd grade teacher noticed it, and when she told my parents I had the privilege of getting a lot of extra support through tutoring and reading academy. I was really embarrassed by it especially since my twin brother was in all the gifted programs at our elementary school. I am super grateful that I was lucky enough to receive all the help and it took a lot of hard work on my part. It instilled in me a lot of motivation in my learning and those skills have helped me a lot to work harder in college.