In my life, I really don’t have a set culture. I haven’t been around particular one type of culture and I find myself doing my own thing. I have been described as non-conforming. People say because I don’t tell people what I am doing. I am very isolated and have created an independent identity with particular values and traditions of my own. Also I don’t follow what my family does. Instead I go out and try new things, to see what other cultures are like. Living in my family isn’t easy. My name is Kelsey G. I have two brothers and two sisters. My brother’s names are Justin, and Jon, and my sisters names are Sara, and Kristen. I am the second to the youngest. My parents are divorced and it’s not easy not having both of them together. Now I have two step brothers and one step dad. My step dads name is Jeff and my two step brother’s names are Shane, and Michael. Michael died from cancer.

When I started high school some teachers already knew me by my last name. I always get labeled as a "G". Foe example people label us as trouble makers. My brother caused so much trouble that some teachers who had him, that have me now, think I’m going to be like him. When they think that, I have to prove them wrong. It’s so not far that I have to go through that just because of my brother. When I go in to a class with the teacher thinking I’m going to be like my brother it makes me just want to act like him, but I don’t. I know I am my own person and I need to turn things around so when my little sister comes in to high school she’s not known as a "G". She doesn’t need to be known by her last name. She needs to stat out new just like every other freshman. I get mad at my brother when I go into a class and the teacher knows me by my last name because of him.
Sometimes I don’t know who I am. I can change depending on the people I hang out with and the mood I am in. if I start to hang out with people who don’t care about what they do or they don’t care about school I start to be like that. Now when I hang out with the right people who do care I care. A few of my personality traits are a direct result of my culture. Here are some things that make me who I am. I’m helpful, logical, courageous, and shy. When I say I’m helpful I mean when people who need help come up to me and ask me to help them I do. My shyness came from my mamaw. She was shy and I adopted that personality. For example my when my mamaw goes out in public, she doesn’t really talk to people because she doesn’t know them. Also when we go out to eat she can’t order her own food she is to shy to talk to the person taking the food.

In my family we do some things that people may think is unique, but as for me it’s not unique because it’s my culture. So therefore I don’t really think about how different and unique it is to other cultures. We have like a family get together and all of that but we really don’t have anything special. Really in my life I have been the same. The year of 2006 is when I changed. I changed because someone who was really close to me died. So when he died I just turned around and changed my life, because I realized you really don’t have that long to live. Also the person who died taught me that nothing in life is as easy as your childhood.

Before Dave died I was not really a good kid, I caused a lot of trouble and I just made my life terrible. When Dave died it made me think where I was going with my life and I realized that the way I was acting wasn’t going to get me anywhere. So that made me think that I needed to change things around to make something out of my life. With my life, my family’s culture doesn’t really impact me instead its more of when Dave died it made me change the way I acted. As I was saying in the beginning of my essay, my family they played a big part in my life. They may have messed it up, but I forgive them. They are my family, so therefore I will be there for them no matter what. My family has really impacted my life. My family has helped make my culture what it is today. To explain Dave to you he was one of my best friend’s dad, but he was there for me for the longest time every. Also when I need someone to talk to I would go to him and tell him that I need to talk and he would also stop what he was doing to talk to me. Then when we got done talking he would help me out and he would give me some advice. Also after e couple of days he would ask me if everything was going all right. So when he died I really didn’t talk to anyone. Still do this day I don’t really talk to anyone when I should.

As for my family we don’t follow our culture. We try new thing and try to see what other peoples cultures are like. In my family we do thing’s for holidays, like our whole family will get together for thanksgiving and we all will do a pitch in. That’s where everybody brings something, but the one who does most of the cooking is whose house we are at. Every summer my family goes down south to see the rest of our family, but any other time they come up here to see all of us. Most of my family lives up here, but my aunt and my mamaw live in a different state then Indiana. My aunt and her family lives in Alabama, and my mamaw and poppy live in Mississippi. We really don’t see them much. We get to see them about twice a year.

As of my self I am a lot different from my family. My family usually does what they want to do, but for me I do my own thing. That’s what kind of makes me who I am. If I would just do what they do the family wouldn’t really be ay fun. It would be any fun because we all would be doing the same thing. But since I am different it makes the family a little unique. Also one other thing that is unique is when my family gets together we all are our selves, we don’t act like good kids because it is our family and we really don’t care what they think of us. Now when we go out in public we act well so that everybody isn’t like looking at us and thinking we are bad kids. (When we are in public we can sometimes we can be our self and then we feel bad because we might have embarrassed the rest of the family.) Like we were at Wal-Mart me and other kids in the family took a cart and we raced around the store. Also when we were in Wal-Mart we played hind-in-seek.