Who I am

Who am I? Well, I’m Kalvin with a ‘K,’ well at least that’s what I thought before stating this assignment. I will avoid the cliché and say that I have thought about it before… but just never told anyone.

If I had to describe the way I saw myself in five words, I would choose ambitious, motivated, independent, responsible, and expressive. There have been many people and experiences in my life that have made me who I am today. I was going to attempt to leave out my life story, but now I feel it’s necessary to fully explain who I am today. I will try to be as brief as possible.

To sum it up, I was adopted at six months, my parents divorced when I was two, and my (also adopted) sister was born with fetal alcohol syndrome. In all seriousness, I would never go back and change any of that, if given the chance. Those are essentially the ‘experiences’ that have made me who I am today.

When adopted, my parents already had four boys of their own, all of whom were in high school already. As a result, I grew up without them. It was basically my sister and I, who lived with my father. My sister is one year older than me and has a mild mental disability. Her only disability is some stunted learning capacity. I guess the easiest way to describe it is to say she has a mind of an eleven-year old—and she always will. She had lived with her mother until he was eight years old, while I lived with my father. This increased my responsibilities.

My father is a hard-working, self-employed painter. All of my life he was at work. I was watching myself, and my sister, home alone, when I was seven years old. Because my father was never home, I took on the roles of the mother that wasn’t there as well as completed the tasks that he just never had time for. I respect him very much because he is such a hard worker—he is 57 years old and running strong! I believe that the combination of these thing resulted in my independence and motivation.

When I started high school, one of my brothers came back to live with us, when he decided to start a college career. At the time I hardly knew him (literally), but now, he’s just like a brother to me, and had played a huge role in my development. My ambition is his fault. He was 25 before he decided to go to college, and that caused me to want to work hard enough to actually have a career by the time I am 25.

Those three people, my father, adopted sister, and brother, are key in defining who I actually am today. The weird thing about my family they are not expressive at all. I believe that’s why I am so expressive and animated. None of them have ever told me how they feel about me…ever. The way they express it to me is when they talk about me. I hear the way my family talks about me to other people, and that is all that I need. I know if they were asked to describe me with five words, they would be very similar to my selection.

As far as my goals are concerned, I just want to make it to a successful, stable, life, like most people. I am driven to work as hard as possible until I don’t even have to work anymore—one thing my father never got to do.