Anything Is Possible, If You Put Your Mind to It

Anything is possible, If you put your mind to it!

Maria Lopez

PSY 202

Dr. Conaway

April 21, 2013

Anything is possible, If you put your mind to it!

I. Where are you from?

a. Born

b. Grew up

II. What was your family like?

a. Youngest of the 6 children

b. Both parents work, to sustain family

c. Began to work at an early age

III. What things do you remember about your childhood?

a. Fun times with my sisters

b. School, unable to attend after school activities

c. Recreation time/summer the best- did not cost money

IV. Who were the important people in your life?

a. Parents

b. Teachers

V. What did you do after you left school?

a. Cal State Long Beach

b. Work - Teachers Assistant/clerk

c. Lived with parents

VI. Do you have your own family now?

a. My husband and kids

b. Life style

c. Work

Anything is possible, If you put your mind to it!

Growing up in a family of six and not having much money; made me realize that anything is possible as long as I put my mind into it. In this paper I will talk about that fact that money is not always necessary, when you want to be someone in life. I will discuss in brief that changes in my life that have made me grow up and that accomplishments I'm very proud of.

I was born in Mexico; I was five when I arrived in the states. We did not have much, both of my parents decided that we would have a better future and life in the states. My dad was the first to make the journey; we follow a few months later. I could still remember crossing the fields near the border of San Diego and Tijuana. I was scared and my older siblings always reassured me everything was going to be okay. We finally met with my dad, he lived in a cramped up apartment with my uncles. It was hard living with them, we never gave it a thought of why we lived the way we did we just continued with our lives. When we finally moved and had a place of our own (apartment) it was such a relief. We moved into a two bedroom apartment and we were happy. We lived in that apartment for over 10 years. My first realization that we did not have money was when a neighbor had cable and we did not. I can still recall asking my parent of why we did not have MTV; it was so hard for me to understand that at that point we were different. May be we were not different but in my eyes I saw it that way. We never went hungry we always had home cooked meals and always had clothes, but the fact that we did not have cable made me feel so different. "Research shows that children and adolescent socioemotional development sets the foundation for who we are as young adults" (Witt, G.A., & Mossler, R.A., 2010). Having the thought that we did not have money made me want to succeed in life.

Being the youngest of six sometimes has it had its benefits. I would be able to get away with so much, that I sometimes took advantage of it. Since both of my parents worked we had to grow up with each other and a few friends. My oldest brother would help my dad during his summer break and my oldest sister would need to take care of the rest of us. We were taught at an early age that if we wanted to get ahead in the "states", we had to work hard and get an education. My parents always felt that our only way out of our situation would be with our education. Both of my parents never completed their education, they were not allowed to finish elementary. They always said to us that, we needed to get good grades and finish school. Both of my parents have always been hard workers, till this date my dad will not stop working. He made sure that we learn the basics of what it was to earn a dollar and how important it is to save that dollar. As we got older and we could work, I would go with my dad and help him out. I never really saw it as helping him out; I saw it as earning some spending money. My dad had always worked in the garment industry and we learn that what we pay for a pair of pants is really not that much. I learned so much about the garment industry working with my dad during the summers that when I finally graduated from high school I never even gave it a thought about getting in the garment industry. I was not happy with what people made, making the clothes and how much the clothes actually cost. What I did learn from working at a young age was on how to keep track my finances.

I remember during the some summer vacations, that we did not have to work, we would go to the community pool, never gave a thought of how cold the water was. Jumping in and learning to swim was the best time. We always went to get the free food at our local school for summer; I thought it was better than my mom's home cooked meals. We either played outside, at the local library parking lot or just ran around. I feel that I had one of the best childhoods ever. We would be free like the wind, so corny but so true. My parents never worried that something would happen to us, we did not have a set time to come home, we just did. I never knew that people could join teams for sports or any type of extra curriculum. We did