Where I Am From

Where I Am From...Where I Am Going

Mark Jabos

PSY 202

Phillip Stewart

January 27, 2013

I. Where am I from?

A. Inner-city Philadelphia

B. Rough neighborhood, crime, poverty

C. How it affected me early in life

II. What I did with my friends?

A. Stupid kid stuff

B. Ran into too much trouble

C. Trouble lead to punishment

D. Gained valuable experience from punishment

III. What I did after I left high school?

A. Tried my hand at Community College

B. Lack of personal discipline made me leave

C. Odd Jobs

D. Went to the Air Force Recruiter

IV. What is my greatest achievement?

A. Joining and re-enlisting in the Air Force

B. Earning several promotions

C. Deploying in support/defense of American interests

D. Going back to school

V. What are my professional goals after the military?

A. Move back to Japan

B. Get a job in the defense industry

C. Continue to support American interests

Where I Am From...Where I Am Going

I like to look at my life in a linear perspective. From the start until the present I have spent my life learning; learning from bad mistakes, learning to accept help from others and learning how to give. The purpose of this paper is to give the reader a brief snapshot of how the events of my past have shaped my life and direction for the future. My life to this point has been anything but ordinary. However, my Philadelphia childhood was fairly typical.

I grew up an only child to very young parents. My father was 20 years old and my mother was 18 at my birth. As one would imagine, the job market was not too keen on giving good jobs to people like my parents. As a result, they took whatever jobs they could find and moved to a very poor section of Philadelphia. My early childhood was often spent looking over my shoulder for bullies or as my mom put it, "some whacko". I was a child on edge.

An important aspect of always being on the lookout for danger and hostility was how it affected the dynamics of my early friendships. I was constantly told of the dangers in my neighborhood by my parents. Danger is not that appealing to a five year old boy. To an eight year old boy, danger can be very appealing or occasionally necessary. As Witt states on stages of human development; in middle childhood, ideas of acceptance take on new meaning (Witt, G.A., & Mossler, 2010). To be accepted as "one of the guys" in my neighborhood, children would often become involved in criminal mischief.

Graffiti, vandalism, Dumpster fires and the like were all too common in my environment. Most of that was perpetrated by young boys; young boys, such as myself, looking for a way to fit in with the crowd. We would often seek the approval of older boys by acting out and bragging about our misdeeds. In a half-hearted attempt to fit in, I set two Dumpsters ablaze. My initial feeling was sheer exhilaration. The feeling shortly after was not as good. A neighborhood woman witnessed my misdeed and alerted