Senior Year - A Collection of Work

Who Am I? (Personal Statement for College)

Who am I? A question asked by many people all around the world, a question that people ask others to find out more information about them; but who am I? I'm a girl, average smarts, average body, average everything. I am a graphic designer. I am adopted. I am of different nationalities, but that doesn't really say who I am as a person of society. I am so much more than what is on the surface. I'm whoever I say I am, so who am I? A quote from Jay-Z perfectly explains what identity is; what it means to be able to identify yourself:

"Identity is a prison you can never escape, but the way to redeem your past is not to run from it, but to try to understand it, and use it as a foundation to grow."

I had a childhood like everyone else, but there were stuff that people didn't know about, things that were kept hidden. I experienced more emotional and psychological pain than most children would have experienced. When I was estimated eleven months old, I first met my new family, I met the family that would cause all the pain and love in my life. One thing helped set me apart from most kids, one thing that would affect my life to this very day; my mother's use of drugs and alcohol. That alone would raise concern among those who hear that one bit of information, but it was a blessing in disguise. My mother gave me up so she could go to rehab so I have been living with my grandparents, my great-grandparents, and my aunt ever since.

Despite me not living with such a bad influence in my life, I was always reminded that I can become a drug user, I can become an alcoholic, I can become a deadbeat. Those phrases, and many like those, affected my life, made me strive to be shut in away from it, made me want to be ten times better than those before me. I strived to quit messing up my education and to get caught up on credits. I did get caught up on all my credits. Only problem, I now have one last major goal...to finally be better than what I was thought I could be, go to college. Get my degree; and help people who have had a past like mine or worse than mine have hope to have a better and stronger future.

I have worked on myself day and night to make sure I could do what I was told that I couldn't do. I worked more to make sure I had plenty of volunteer hours, I made sure I was volunteering more than anything else in my life. So, who am I? I am a girl. I am adopted. I was raised by blood family and non-blood family. I was raised to be the best I can be. I am myself, but that is not who I am. I am Liliana. I have a past, a present, and a future. So the question isn't who am I, it's what can I become?