"Uniquely American" essay

        It was always hard for me to feel like an American since my whole family comes from Poland. My parents were born in Poland and lived there for around 20 years of their lives until they fled the Communist country; neither of them even had a college degree. My brothers and I were first generation Polish-Americans and our parents raised us with strong pride in their lineage. With that came many bias’s towards America and a lot of influence from the Roman Catholic Church, of which our parents were very involved in. For the first fifteen years of my life, my parents even made us attend mass and go through the process of being confirmed. It took me about thirteen years to figure out that this whole “religion” thing isn’t for me. But at that point, it was a little hard to break the news to my parents so I left the situation alone and was glad that, after a while, they didn’t make us go to church anymore. Because, really, my brothers and I despised the idea of standing in church for an hour every Sunday listening to some “ordained priest” preach to us about things that we could not care less about.

        I guess there isn’t any one story that makes me uniquely American. I think my life as a whole and the experiences I’ve been through have shaped who I am today and I have created my own definition of being an American. That’s just my view on it, at least. My parents raised us, obviously, to be Roman Catholics and got us baptized at birth and everything. Which, honestly, I think that there should be an age of consent for baptisms because I’m not quite sure babies can make that big of a decision for themselves. My parents kept my brothers and I sheltered most of our lives and we did not get many privileges until we were older, my brothers in high school and me in the final stages of middle school. Oh yes, I forgot to mention: my brothers are triplets, all older than me.

        The methods my parents used for parenting were unorthodox to say the least, at least for American standards that is. Punishments were severe and my parents were pretty damn strict about pretty much everything. For example, if I didn’t make my bed in the morning I was grounded for the night and there was no negotiating with them. Our parents didn’t let us go out on weekdays, nor did we get to play any videogames on the weekdays. And those rules lasted up until the day we got out of the house, whether it was off to college or somewhere else. That’s something I’ve seen firsthand: the places you can go after high school. All my brothers ended up in a community college trying to boost their GPAs so they could head off to college like their friends. The middle triplet, Erik, moved out of the house before he finished at community college and soon got married at twenty-one. He now lives with his wife in an apartment building and has two or three unsteady jobs that he hopes will pay their bills every month. It took my oldest triplet brother, Konrad, four semesters to get out of community college; he’s at Illinois State University now studying music therapy. It took my youngest triplet brother, Daniel, three and a half semesters to get out of community college; he started his first semester at Illinois State this year while I’m in my second semester at Carthage College.

        Anyway, I did pretty well in school while growing up but in seventh grade I sort of stopped caring and started getting bad grades. Even though I had bad grades, my English teacher told me, with my writing skill, I could potentially become a successful writer one day. She gave me a notebook to write in and an idea notebook as a gift and I was so excited to start writing things. But, I didn’t really go the route of writing books right away. I mostly wrote a lot of poetry, which I love to do and I believe is a great outlet, and also one short story. I tried starting two books but I couldn’t stick to them because the idea sort of fell apart and I gave up. Although, I’m waiting to think up some crazy story one day and get published so I can call myself an author.

        When I was in eighth grade, I found a passion in music that I just could not let go of. I was a huge punk rocker at the time and I remember this morning as if it were yesterday: I walked into homeroom in eighth grade one day and my friend said I needed to listen to this song and just the way he told me, I was very curious to hear it. That was when I heard my first heavy metal song; it was called “Diamonds Aren’t Forever” by Bring Me The Horizon. I couldn’t get enough: the ridiculous speed of the drums, the crazy guitar riffs, but most of all the incoherent screaming. At this point in my life I had already tried guitar and tossed it aside a year or two back. But when I heard the screams in these songs I got so inspired and wanted to be the lead vocalist in a heavy metal band so badly. Now I’m in a band, people watch my covers on YouTube, and I’ve even performed live a few times. I hope to become huge one day; I believe I can do it if I want it bad enough but it does involve some luck and connections that I haven’t made yet.

        So what makes me uniquely American? Well, I believe that being able to do whatever I set my mind to makes me uniquely American. People’s dreams are what makes them unique, where they come from makes them unique, and do they go for it? That decision makes everyone unique because not everyone goes with their dream job/occupation. And I cannot grasp why anyone wouldn’t. If you love something enough and you put enough time and energy into it, it will work out for you. People may have one dream or several which also makes them unique. They are faced with a decision to make: drop a dream or find a way to achieve them all. So many possibilities and so many ways to go about them…I choose all my dreams, but that’s just me.