random assortment of information

i'm hoping that this assignment will:
....allow me to understand who i am and what has influenced me to become this way,
....accept who i am,
....get a better feeling for what i want to do with my life, and why
....realize and acknowledge all of the people, places, and events that have made me, me
....i hope this isn't too difficult for me considering i usually like structured assignments that aren't really open to anything
....i also hope that this assignment will excite me for what's to come as an english major because i feel like everyone has just been trying to talk me out of it!

growing up in a family of 5 kids-being shadowed by my older sisters, treated as a baby by my parents and older brother...
kevin being born when i was 11...no longer being treated as the baby, but instead somewhat lost in the mess of the 4 older kids.

dance-cheerleading-gymnastics becoming my life, at first not because i wanted to, but because it was my sister had done.
being diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at 15. surgeries. intense treatment. no more "high-impact activity" AKA no more dance, cheer, or gymnastics.

my father's impact on my family. cheating, lying, gambling, drinking.
and my mother's inability to leave him.

"suburbia" and growing up in a developing and growing community

the protests and petitions fighting for the historic parts of our town that were destined to become another shopping center or restaurant

the gossip between all the mothers on our block, mine being one of the worst

in 2006, Lake Zurich was named by Frommer's as one of the top hundred "Best Places to Raise Your Family" and by U.S. News as one of the "Top Twenty-five Affordable Places to Live in the Country"

basically mini subdivisions every where you look. shopping strips. every restaurant you could imagine. parks. pets. little kids. nice cars. crappy cars in the portions of town that many are advised "not to go", stupid. railroad that goes through town that i don't see in use too often. "downtown". friday night high school football games, where nearly the whole town is......when they're good. more drug busts, sexual assaults, dui's, and other crime, then there should be for a town that is "best to raise your family". 20 years ago was all cornfield, now it's all houses and stores. will be overpopulated if they don't stop their damn building! construction everywhere, ALWAYS. people fighting the growing and construction, ALWAYS! eminent domain crap.

music. reading. writing. reading. music. family. friends. alone time. technology.

"Deny to working-class children any common share in the immaterial, and presently they will grow into the men who demand with menaces a communism of the material. If the masses are not thrown a few novels, they may react by throwing up a few barricades." -Eagleton

"Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning. The teacher's thinking is authenticated only by the authenticiy of the students' thinking. The teacer cannot think for his students, nor can he impose his thoughts on them. Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication."-Freire

"An approach to civilization as the humanization of man through various influences, including literature adn the arts, raises questions about whether it is at all possible to respond to literature at the level of who we are, in all our "naturalness" and "ordinariness"..."-Viswanathan