What is on the Inside

As I look at my life, and how I was shaped to be the person I am, many different aspects of my life have come into view. One major part of my life, which has caused me some grief and agony, along with some memories that will last forever, is the fact that I was born with HCM (Hypertrophic Cardiomyopothy). HCM is a type of heart disease, which I inherited from my mother.

When I was younger, I did not know that I had the disease. I was like every other boy, as seen by the outside, who played sports and did many other activities with my friends. Over time, with a set of many different tests, it was found that I have the disease. Afterward, my life changed from one of joy to one of grief and agony. Afterward, I was unable to continue to play the physical sports, and many of the things that I had gotten used to doing.

Why I say this is because it is a major part of my life. This disease has taken a lot from me and my family, but along with what it has taken, it has given back. It's darkest before it becomes light. With this disease, I have learned what I can do and what I can't. One wrong step, and I could go into Atypical Tachycardia. This has lead me to live my life day by day, and see what I am looking at through a different set of eyes.

For anybody who has had a major risk of dying, you will know what I am talking about. Everyone has hard times, and everyone has good times. It is what you choose to do with the times in between that makes who you are. I live my life day by day, never knowing what the next moment has in store.

The mini history of Joey

Honestly, I like to believe that my life does not follow one of these grand narratives; and that I am more complex than a simplified version of the events that occurred during my life. Although there are some events when cumulated may have shaped who I am, there is no single event in my life that has determined who I am today. With that being said, let’s get to the mini story of my life.

I grew up in a small town in Columbus Indiana, where I attended a Montessori school. For everyone who doesn’t know what that is, it is a school where students have the freedom to learn on their own while being encouraged by a teacher to pursue whatever the student wished to learn. I believe this may have lead me to develop the strong personality that I have now and also develop my unique aspirations. Similarly, I was raised in a culture where the media I saw was constantly telling people to live their life to the fullest and dream big. With shows such as Kenan and Kel, Doug, and the magic school bus, it is no wonder why I have been shaped to have big dreams.

However, although I may have been shaped to have big aspirations, I determined what those specific dreams were. I knew from even the smallest age that I wanted to do my own thing and not follow what everyone else was doing. While all the other kids were dreaming of become firemen, police officers, or even princess’s I knew that I wanted to start my own business. Even now, while most people are still following the crowd and attending college just because they feel pressured by society to do it, I still know that I want to come here to learn how to start my own business.

Religion values

My “story” has definitely been partially defined through my church. The above picture is my friends and I on our seventh grade mission trip. I have attended this same church for about twelve years, and it has influenced and developed my personality to what it is today. Twelve years ago, when I was enrolled in preschool there I had no idea that this church would become like a second home to me. As the church years went by my faith went through its ups and down just because of life, but church always brought it back to life and put it into actions through mission trips and service projects. I feel incomplete without doing these types of projects now. So in a way I was destined to be a very religious person, but I am actually not. Church has obviously influenced my beliefs, but the major aspect it taught me was to always try to help others. This value has been instilled into my personality. This church has also sparked many deep lifelong friendships, friendships that will probably led to group led service projects of all of us. I have also grown my sense of culture through this church by going to very poor places in Mexico and around the country for mission trips. Sadly, I have seen people walk hopeless down the road. I have seen shanties build of sheet. I have seen the hope our youth group instills in others. These sights all make me want to help more. Helping in some way is always on my mind. A huge chapter of my life has to deal with this church, and all the other chapters have references to it. As a college student now, I still look for ways to help other so that I may feel the satisfaction of being apart of something better.

My “story” has definitely been partially defined through my church. The above picture is my friends and I on our seventh grade mission trip. I have attended this same church for about twelve years, and it has influenced and developed my personality to what it is today. Twelve years ago, when I was enrolled in preschool there I had no idea that this church would become like a second home to me. As the church years went by my faith went through its ups and down just because of life, but church always brought it back to life and put it into actions through mission trips and service projects. I feel incomplete without doing these types of projects now. So in a way I was destined to be a very religious person, but I am actually not. Church has obviously influenced my beliefs, but the major aspect it taught me was to always try to help others. This value has been instilled into my personality. This church has also sparked many deep lifelong friendships, friendships that will probably led to group led service projects of all of us. I have also grown my sense of culture through this church by going to very poor places in Mexico and around the country for mission trips. Sadly, I have seen people walk hopeless down the road. I have seen shanties build of sheet. I have seen the hope our youth group instills in others. These sights all make me want to help more. Helping in some way is always on my mind. A huge chapter of my life has to deal with this church, and all the other chapters have references to it. As a college student now, I still look for ways to help other so that I may feel the satisfaction of being apart of something better.

See the family resemblance?

Lisa (mom) '82, Wayne (dad) '82, Jessica (me) '09

See the family resemblance?  As you can see, school success runs in my family.

Ever since I was kid, I knew graduations were in my future – first from elementary school, then from high school, and then from college.

I was a white girl, growing up in Stillwater, Minnesota, attending one of the highest rated high schools in the country – I was going to college.

Right around report card time, my dad would go down into the basement and pull out his old high school and college transcripts to compare GPAs with me.  You don’t think that had an impact on me?

I'm not sure when it started, but this competition has shaped my life.  I constantly strive for the best.  You see that “Honors” sash around my neck?  No, it’s not the 4.0 honors award, but it’s pretty damn close – and boy was I jealous of those 7 kids who were 4.0s (I could have rubbed that all over my dad’s face!).

My dad was offered a job at 3M basically out of college, and has worked their his entire life, now employed as a Director of Engineering – very big shoes to fill.

The funny part of this whole story is that although this is how I imagine my life, this is what I picture it like – success, competitive, living up to my parent’s hope and dreams – it does not run in my family.  In fact, I have 6 cousins, all considerably older than I am, and I will be the 3^rd of us to graduate from college.  My 17 year old brother is a junior in high school and he’s getting the grades to pass.

I can't pin point what it was about my upbringing that shaped me in this way, but I'm glad it did.  Without ambition, without loving, supportive family and friends, and without the pride of success, I would have nothing.

My Father the Catholic, Stereotypical Old Jewish Miser

Growing up the son of an attorney in a Catholic family in the western suburbs, you could pretty much guess I came from money and have never worked an honest day in my life. You couldn’t be more wrong.

Since I’ve been old enough to hold a rake I’ve been doing work around the house. I learned how to use riding lawn mower when I was eight and started working a Job the day I turned sixteen. Unlike my schoolmates out in Orono, my allowance depended on whether or not a lengthy list of chores was completed. I never had the newest toys like the other kids unless I had saved up my money to get it. Don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t deprived as a child. We lived in a nice house (not as nice as my mother would have liked or as expensive as it could have been), but we all drove used cars we had fixed up ourselves to save money.

Every Sunday we would clip coupons from the ads in the paper to save fifty cents on this or dollar on that, sometimes things we did really need but were a good deal. He would also drive across town with several five-gallon gas cans to save a nickel or two per gallon. It drove my mother nuts, because she knew we had money to spend but my father just wouldn’t part with it. My mother is my father’s secretary and paralegal, so he controls her paychecks and sees her bills and bank statements. My parents would fight about money constantly. My mother’s complaints almost perfectly mirror those of Mala’s in MAUS and my father’s would be the same a Vladek’s. I remember gut wrenching fights when I was little that would reduce me to tears as I watched my parents marriage tear apart over money issues.

Through the years I’ve learned more about my father’s past. How he lost his father at a young age, and worked full time to put himself through law school and support his mother. I know now that having money is like a security blanket for him, and that is why even when he has plenty he would rather keep it than enjoy it. I find myself sharing some of his habits, clipping coupons, shopping around for good deals, and fixing things on my own rather than paying someone else to do it. I learned how to work hard to be successful, but not to flaunt my success. But I also bear the burden of feeling like I need to have money to feel safe secure and content with life and have already begun to feel some of the social ramifications

Video Game Hero

It may seem funny and extremely nerdy or even loser-ish, but a major contributor to the “story” of my life is video games.  When I was a young lad, I had always found great comfort in video games; especially in particular, RPG’s or role playing games.  A role playing game typically had a hero, a villain and a quest to defeat the villain.  Along the way the player would learn the story of the hero, their values, attributes and virtues.  Afterschool I would rush to get my homework done so that I could re-enter the world of video games.  I loved indulging myself in these games.

One game in particular that I played was “Final Fantasy VII”.  This game is a staple in role playing video games. “Final Fantasy VII” follows hero Cloud Strife, who joins the rebel organization AVALANCHE in their quest to go against Shinra, a major world dominating Corporation, which is taking the world’s resources and using it for their energy.  As you play through the game Cloud and his companions become involved in a larger world-threatening conflict and face Sephiroth, the game's main villain. 

This game conveyed to me that life is hard and that even though things may be bleak, (like world destruction bleak), you always have your friends and family by your side.  Most role playing games follow this type of moral story focal point and as I got older, playing many different types of RPG’s, I realize that I have molded my life into my view of the heroes of these RPG’s.  The heroes or protagonists are strong characters, mentally and physically, they fight for others and live their life not for themselves but for the greater good, ultimately reaching the end or my goal.  I take all of this and convert it into the real world, literally.  I work out a lot and try to keep improving my education.  I take care of my friends and family and live a moral and ethical life so that I am not a nuisance to the people close to me.  I go all-out to get what I want and know that I have to work hard for it.   

These games, to a certain extent, educated me about life.  They expanded my vocabulary, showed me what love might look like, how good people and bad people behave and conveyed what it means to keep striving and going through hardships to reach your goals.  I try to be like a video game hero, not in the context of defeating monsters and rescuing beautiful women, but a hero to my friends and family in life.  So in an extremely nerdy sense, this is how I believe video games contribute to who I am.