Life

My Life Rundown Growing up in a small town was my life style as a kid. In this report, I will talk about different life memories as a child in a small town. I will discuss how it was having parents that worked in mills for a living and how I dealt with it. Coming up as a child I learned to be family oriented and always help other family members that were in need. My educational goals and dreams in life will also be discussed in this paper. Having family that is close and having great memories to talk about in the future is very important to me. From my education I have also experienced many different job ventures I will be discussing. My name is Cornelius Seals. I am twenty-six years old. I grew up with two older sisters that help raise me as a child due to my parents having to work a lot to pay the bills. I grew up in a small town called Sylacauga, Alabama. Sylacauga has a population of 12,000 people. A lot of land that is in my city belongs to the Indians. We have several schools named after them because of this matter. Growing up in a small city resulted in being close with family, and mainly knowing everyone in town. As a result of this, I have learned the importance of family and being close to family. My parents did not have the privilege of going to college and instead started working at popular mill companies to take care of us. Working at a mill was the normal occupation a teenager would do after graduating high school because their parents also worked in a mill. It was said typically, young people choose occupations at the same general social class level as those of their parents-although this is less true today than it was a decade or two ago (Biblarz, Bengtson, & Bucur, 1996). My parents on the other hand, directed me towards wanting to go to college and change the family cycle. Everyone in my family was really close. We believed in always helping each other out whenever help was needed. I can remember every holiday we would get together and everyone would meet up at my grandmother’s house. Different family members would bring a desired dish and my grandmother would prepare the main dishes. On the Fourth of July my uncle would bring so many fire works and allow all the kids to go out in the yard and watch the fire works pop off. We would video tape every gathering so that when we meet up in the future we would watch the previous videos as a family and laugh together. That’s what made the family close. As a child my cousins and I would pick a time during the summer and visit my uncle in another city that was bigger. He would take us to college basketball games; we would get refreshments for free and got to meet the players. Playing sports also played a big part in my family. My mother’s brother enjoyed playing basketball in high school. He won many awards such as: All State, MVP, and All American awards. From his performance he earned a basketball scholarship at the University of Alabama Birmingham. He played for the full four years and got his jersey retired. After playing at the university he then went to play overseas for two years. The Denver Nuggets drafted him in the eighth round. On his way back he was in a terrible car wreck that disabled him from playing basketball again. My uncle’s success in sports persuaded me to play and grow to love the game. I also played basketball and football. I was named All State Defensive End in basketball and named MVP several times in my high school career. One of my dreams in life was to be able to play college level basketball. My dreams were interrupted by a knee injury I encountered during a Christmas tournament my senior year. Singing was also another talent that my family shared. I had a uncle that played the keyboard and sang in a popular church choir. I have recorded a few RnB songs in the past. When I was a teenager I became a part of a choir group called Anointed Voices. We traveled around and performed at different church functions. This allowed me to learn more about Church and my family’s spiritual culture. After graduating high school, I became interested in joining the United States Navy. I knew that because of my knee injury I would have to either go to college and use financial aid or join the military and allow them to pay for my college tuition. I decided to go into the military after three months of deciding. Once I joined the military, I experienced many things. My first year in the military I was labeled an oil king. What this meant is that I was responsible for all the fuel transfers throughout the ship. It was a very important job in the engineering department. After two years of being an oil king, I decided to become a dental technician in the Navy. I got picked up for the school and went off to Texas for awhile to attend school. When school was done, the Navy sent me to Virginia Beach, Virginia to continue my tour as a dental technician. During the four years I was a dental technician, I accomplished a goal that I always wanted to do. I earned my Associates Degree in Biomedical Engineering at ECPI College of Technology. In my Adult Development study book it stated, it is still true that sex-role definitions designate some jobs as “women jobs” and some as “men’s jobs” (Reskin, 1993; Zhou, Dawson, Herr, & Stukas, 2004). After working in the dental field for a while, I started to feel as if the job was meant more for females. That is what also triggered me into changing my career field to engineering. Right before school I got married and had two beautiful daughters by the name of Destinee and Ivorii. It was a challenge to maintain a family, go to school full time and also commit my self to serving our country. With all of these experiences, it taught me how to be a better husband to my wife, a better father to my kids and a better man in life. Do to the fact that I was separated from my family for so long; I decided to get out of the military after my contract was completed. In December of 2007 I was discharged from the United States Navy into the civilian life style. It was a very difficult transaction. My first job as a civilian was an Electronics Technician. I installed fiber optic cables on U.S. Battle Ships. After doing Fiber Optics for a year I became a Laser Technician. As a Laser Technician I build complex fiber optic lasers that support different medical companies, and engineering companies. I have been with this job for about one year and enjoy what I do. It goes back to where I came from and how my family and environment affected my life. I think it made me the proud husband and father I am today.