Dear future me (Blog #38)

What kind of person do you aspire to be?

Hello future me, I hope you are living a similar life to the one I have been planning for you. I’ve worked hard for you and I hope you don’t waste that. I hope you have a good paying stable job that keeps you happy at the same time. I know a job like that will be hard to find because good pay and happiness don’t fit well in the same sentence. I’ve been thinking a lot about jobs in law, I hope you’ll be a good lawyer. You’ll be a strong independent resilient lawyer, just like Michelle Obama.

After reading the book Becoming by Michelle Obama I realized a lot. First of all, I enjoy reading I want to do it more often. Second of all politics isn’t always old white men arguing, not all aspects of politics are boring there are some really interesting and inspiring parts of it. And last of all I am quite similar to Michelle, our brains work the same way, which I thought was cool. Her mindset is the same as mine, put in the work get the results and always be working towards success. She makes her decisions the same way I do as well, thinking through it not rushing (but sometimes those decisions get too ambitious). She’s an amazing person inside and out and I hope when I get old I do turn out like her. She’s caring and compassionate but also a force to be reckoned with.

Michelle Obama has had many setbacks in life, living in a poorer part of town, being black, being female, having so many deaths in her life, and having so many people tell her she isn’t good enough. As I see it everyone is put down on a racetrack through life. The end of the race is just pure success, it’s when you stop, look around and realize you are happy where you are in life and have achieved what you’ve wanted. There are many hills and rivers to cross on some people’s tracks, while others have a conveyor belt built in. Despite all these challenges and advantages, everyone is trying to scramble to the same place. There is no first-place winner or last-place loser it’s all just a personal game you want to finish for yourself. A great example of someone who has been placed further behind many people but has still fought as hard as she could all the way to the end is Michelle Obama. But I don’t think her story is over, she still has race track to cover.

I know I am privileged enough to be placed on a decent track, but I do believe I have started further behind a lot of people. I have grown up poorer than most people in my school, I am a female, I have always had a harder time in school, and I don’t have the easiest path carved out for me. I’m not upset about it though because it all just builds me stronger. What does upset me is when people assume I have it easy. Many people think because I get good grades I’m a very intelligent person and school is easy for me, I couldn’t be further from that. Ever since I was younger I knew I was different from how other kids learnt, I’m much slower getting work done and I have a hard time remembering things. Many subjects in school are hard for me. Knowing things doesn’t come naturally to me but what saves me is how much I want those good grades. I have always had a great mindset for success, I know what I need to do and I do as much as I can. I put my all into every project and wait desperately to see the result. I want that academic validation and praise and I get it. I will continue to work hard for what I want, but I just hope that people understand it in no way is easy.

For my future I hope my ambitions don’t weaken, I want to continue having the attitude I have. Hard work is all I have going for me, so I need to use it. I want to graduate from Seycove Secondary with the PLP skills I’ve slowly acquired throughout grade 8 till grade 12. I will then apply to as many schools as I can, and I do believe I will be able to get into a great school (as long as I keep up whatever I am doing right now). I hope throughout my schooling I will have time to have a part time job, currently, I want to work at white spot as a greeter but I don’t have time.

When or if I achieve these plans or something along the lines of them, I hope I don’t work myself to death. Knowing me I’ll ignore this advice because I always do. Work first (and make sure to finish it) and then when you have time you can worry about the toll it takes on you. I don’t think how I work is bad for me, I don’t overwork myself I just take my time and go slowly but when doing that I have to make sure I finish it. The one thing I am worried about is if I start overworking so hard I start handing in half-finished work that is rushed. I almost fell into that pit of rushed careless work this semester but in the end, I have cleaned myself up. In my mind, there is nothing worse you can do than hand in work you didn’t put your whole heart into.

Anyway in the future I need to keep a balance, success is more than just doing well at your job. I need to be happy to achieve success. To be happy I will need to balance my job with my social life and have restful time for myself. I’m an introvert, not the “I hate people” kind of introvert, but the kind where having time for myself sometimes is very important. I enjoy seeing people but I also enjoy my alone time. I hope the future me falls into a good balanced routine. I also hope I stay active!! I enjoy sports and being fit but sometimes I don’t have enough time to do what I want to do to stay healthy. Michelle Obama managed to fit in going for runs every morning while also being a mom of two young girls, working at the hospital, and promoting her husband. She’s such an inspiration.

She’s also a great example of a girls girl. There’s a toxic competitive nature that some women have with each other, but women who are there for each other no matter what and band together are called girls girls. I’d like to think of myself as a girls girl, I try my best to be one. But Michelle is peak womanhood, she respects women greatly, even women whom her husband is running against in political battles. When there are so many things in the world going against us, we need to stick together.

Lastly, I’d like to talk about how proud I am of my work during this project. At the start, I was quite worried because I chose the longest book with 400 pages, and I am a very slow reader. Luckily I managed to finish it while also handing in other great work. Here is a video I made on how I finished my book in so little time.

The work I produced during this project in my opinion is deeply thoughtful and sophisticated. I also enjoyed producing my work in such a variety of media. For this project I used craft multiple times (I LOVE USING CRAFT), I made a video (I LOVE MAKING VIDEOS), a drawing (DRAWINGS FUN), and an infographic (IM GOOD AT MAKING THESE THEY ARE SO FUN). Here is the multitude of ways I produced my work on this project:

Drawing:

Infographic:

Video:

Craft links:

– Exemplary Blogging 

– Novel notes

– 5 things to find your purpose 

I genuinely really liked doing this project, a lot of the time I exaggerate in blog posts but this blog felt more real. I like planning my future and talking about the ideas I have laid out for myself. I also got to display my work in such a variety that it wasn’t repetitive during this project, and I loved that. It is easier for me to hand in my work in a more creative way (video, craft doc, infographic) than just filling in a worksheet, I can show and explain my work more effectively.

In the end, the kind of person I aspire to be is a more developed version of myself right now. I don’t want to change my mindset strategies or routine, I have a good work ethic and I just hope that it continues and expands into more than just my school work. I want to be as disciplined, hardworking, caring, and as dedicated as Michelle Obama. After reading her book she is now my idol, she’s incredibly talented and someone majorly I look up to.