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As a quieter kid in school, it was sometimes hard for me to enact my agency when it came to my learning. My mother is a high school math teacher and my dad got an architectural engineering degree; so when it came to more logical classes like my math and science courses growing up, I always had a more natural inclination towards those. I was one to try and come up with my own little experiments that I found interesting, even if they weren’t completely scientific. Anything that peaked my attention, I would try to go out and discover more for myself. Even making up imaginary scenarios to play around with was something I enjoyed to do, though.

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With my mom being a teacher at the school I attended, these readings have really made me reflect and think about the schooling I received along with my mom’s experience there. This was a small, predominantly white, school (like I mentioned in my autobiography) and in my years there, I never saw much inclusion of marginalized peoples' cultures in our curriculum. To help paint a picture of the environment here; when students in our school put together a small program for black history month, they received backlash from other students and parents just for putting up a Black Lives Matter poster at the end. It’s shocking to look back now and reflect on how strongly these people reacted to my black classmates just slightly trying to integrate appreciation of the black culture in our school.

Additionally, most histories that I remember from my early learning usually focused on white leaders or “heroes”; with these accounts not being the most truthful either. We covered much like Christopher Columbus’ adventures, The Alamo, etc. For example, like when learning about the events at the Alamo; we were told all that the Texans were fighting for their “freedom“, and made them out to be these great heroes. In actuality, these colonists had settled on Mexico owned land, began to form their own small towns, refused to pay taxes (killed Mexican soldiers who tried to collect taxes) and not follow Mexican laws (by not giving up their slaves). It was when the Mexican government tried to go after the killers of the soldiers that these colonists began an open revolt, subsequently losing and setting up a narrative for American colonizers to feel more justified in their pursuits. This is just one small example of misrepresentation of history, especially when it comes to people of color. With the Texas government having such a strong grip on what they let be taught in schools, it has allowed for the systemic racism present in our society to continue to thrive at a steady rate.

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Being a white woman, my race did afford me certain privileges through life. I did not have to worry as much, like some other do, about being attacked or put down for my skin tone; which is sadly not a regular experience that some get to have. I would still say there was no bizarre privileges that came with my race, like extreme favoritism or anything similar to that. An additional privilege, though, that my race afforded me was being able to see myself represented more in media that definitely, likely affected how I was able to develop through life.

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My gender was something that definitely impacted how I played growing up. With an older brother, there was certain things my sister and I were never allowed to do compared to him. Certain activities, say like hunting etc., we’re not deemed as appropriate for us to engage in. This made me feel growing up, that there were certain things expected of me and certain ways I ought to behave, where I wasn’t allowed to fully explore my self identity. This has been a long and continuous process for me to work through and it’s definitely something I acknowledge as having a major impact on my past and current development.

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I feel I was pretty lucky to have experiences in my childhood where a I was surrounded by people who spoke a completely different language to me. The first day cares and schools I went to always had a pretty major Hispanic population, so Spanish was something I was familiar with hearing. In pre-k I was one of the only white students allowing me to experience being an odd one out compared to my different experiences in my later schooling. Having this, I’m thankful that it’s allowed me to be be a more tolerant human being to those that have a different culture from me.

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This discussion has opened me up to all the possible ways children have of succeeding even with different ability levels. For myself, my abilities enable me to engage in pretty stable communication and be independent in how I choose to travel with my body. I have been lucky to have the abilities I do compared to others in our society but just because there is differences does not make them less capable or less deserving of comfort in our world. These discussions just exemplified for me that our world needs to adapt more for persons with disabilities rather than them adapting for the world.

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In my experience, the culture of the Catholic Church had a major impact on my childhood. It’s a religion of very set ways to live your life; especially when referring to your sexuality. The environment that this produced was one where if you went against the grave, you are seen as off the path and are somehow not living life in the right way. For a young girl not completely sure of her sexuality, this had a major impact on me. Who I felt in my heart I was, didn’t line up with the church’s beliefs and so for a long time, before I finally left the church, I internally struggled with who I was and who my parents wanted me to be.

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Most of the technology I interacted with growing up was usually just things like television, DVD players, and the radio. My dad was always a movie fan and so we had a large collection of films in my house. Being the rebel child I was, I sometimes got into movies I shouldn’t have, which I think helped to expose me more to the world at a younger age. It probably wasn’t the best for me, but I had other methods of play available to me by living out in the country that I’m thankful for.

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My parents have had a house in the country since I was in kindergarten and so nature and our environment has had a pretty major impact on how I developed. I’ve always been interested in how our planet functions and enjoyed interacting with the flora and fauna that surrounded me. This has obviously still stuck with me through my adult life as my major is now based around sustainability. This is probably the aspect of my childhood that I’m some of the most grateful for; as I believe interaction with our planet from a young age is extremely important for the future of our climate.

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I was lucky enough growing up that I never experienced any particularly severe trauma, such as sexual or extremely violent, but I definitely had experiences dealing with my parents growing up that has effected the way I function today. Growing up on a strong Catholic family, many anxieties developed in me from a young age on top of the fact that my parents never acknowledged that my siblings and I had early signs of mental illness that they concluded was just a normal part of growing up. They were right that anxiety is obviously completely natural, but we experienced it at a severely higher level. Additionally, my sister did experience sexual trauma as a child and so with this mindset, it was hard for my parents to grasp how that might have affected her.