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I'm on the left and my bestfriend is on the right

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Hi, welcome to Emma's Identity Project. In my American literature class, our first unit of study is identity and reflecting on our own identity and creating elements of our own identity portfolio. Over the past five weeks, we have been exploring different parts of who we are. In this Padlet we will be responding to three prompts: Who am I? Who and what do I represent? And who will I become? Enjoy:)

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Who am I?

I am Emma Steinburg. My parents wanted to name me Emma because my mom had wanted to name her daughter Emma since she was a teenager. Well, a little before they named me Emma, the FRIENDS episode where Rachael had her baby and named it Emma came out and well everyone was naming their baby girls Emma. So much for the original name mom and dad!

I am a 16 year old, white female from Seattle Washington. I am a junior at Ballard high school. I have gone to Greenwood elementary school, and Whitman middle school. I have a dad, a mom, and a younger sister. I have a lot of close friends but three of my closest friends would be Diyanka, Nevaeh, and Arielle. I have white skin, brown hair, brown eyes, and freckles just like my dad. My mom and I don’t look alike but we sound and act the same. I am straight and do not have a religion. I live in Greenwood, in a middle-class home. My dad is an architect, and my mom is the marketing manager at a geotechnical engineering firm. In my house we only speak English. We don’t know any other languages except for the amounts we have learned in high school and for my parents also in college.

I play basketball and I swim, which are two main parts of my life. I have been playing basketball for 7 years now and I have been swimming my whole life. Basketball is my main sport, and I joined the high school swim team for the exercise part of the sport, but I've met a lot of great friends and I have built a good relationship with our coach. She cares a lot for all her swimmers, and it makes me feel very appreciated. I've been on many different basketball teams throughout the time I've played, but each team has made me grow as a person.

I see myself as a kind and respectful person. I am appreciative of others, and I respect what their beliefs are even if I don’t believe the same things. For example, I don’t have a religion or believe in God, but my dad's side of the family is religious. They go to church every Sunday, they pray before every meal, and they are heavy on what the bible says. As you might think, they do not support gay marriage and they did not get the vaccine. These are two examples that I disagree with, but I understand that their thoughts will not change because an idea has been carved into their heads. I fully support the LGBTQ+ community and I support their marriages.

I also see myself as hard working. Whatever is in front of me, I put forward my best work and my best effort. I get good grades in school, but sometimes I get very overwhelmed. Lately I've been struggling with my mental health, and school has been difficult to go to and complete my work. But I still try to put everything I must succeed. I hold myself to a high standard and so do my parents, and sometimes it can get stressful.

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Who and what do I represent?

I represent my family. My mom. My dad. My grandparents. All my family. Everything I do they hear about. Good or bad. They want to hear about my successes and my failures. My mom used to tell me when I was younger to behave in public. I guess it was to make sure she didn’t look like a bad parent even though she is the best mom I could ever ask for.

I represent my school. being at school and being educated by the teachers. When completing work, I represent my teachers because they are the ones teaching me. When in sports seasons at Ballard, I represent my sport, m coach, and my school all at the same time. When I go to other schools and play, I make sure I stay on my best behavior because I am representing my school and if anything would to go wrong the school would hear about it.

This whole last summer I represented my select basketball team All Out. Over the summer I played in a scouting circuit in many different places such as L.A., Chicago, and Atlanta. During this time, I had to make sure I was acting as if I was on a business trip, because I technically was. Our team manager Lisha told us at the beginning of all the trips that we are representing the organization, our teammates, our coaches, our parents, Seattle, and the sport. That is a lot to represent, but it makes sense. We were going to play in front of college coaches and if we wanted to get seen we would have to play how we play and show that we love this sport but at the same time being respectful and acting professional. This experience made me grow as a person and taught me a lot.

I represent the people I work for. I am a basketball coach for young girls and boys from grades 3-7. I got this job from my old basketball coach. I represent part of the Ballard select basketball organization. I make sure I have a smile on my face and give them all the knowledge I have for basketball. At my job, since they are little kids, I can't swear which is a hard adjustment coming straight from school, but I present myself how an elementary school teacher would but for basketball.

In the end, everything came back to me. The way I talk, act, look, and present myself all reflects on everyone and everything I represent but also me.  I want to be known as someone who is kind, respectful, well spoken, and positive. That is why I am who I am. I don’t want people to know me as a difficult person to get along with. That’s why I present myself the way I do. Who knows, one wrong move could ruin your reputation.

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Who will I be in 10+ years?

In 10+ years I hope to be done with college. Right now, I am looking to major in kinesiology/ sports medicine. I'm looking at a few colleges on the east coast and some in California. I hope to make many friends in college and have a good experience. I want to stay around sports because I have been playing them for my whole life. Being a physical therapist would let me do that. And if I decide this summer to continue travelling for basketball, I might get a chance to play in college, but that has never been a goal of mine, but that experience would be a once in a lifetime thing. So, it all depends on what I decide to do this summer.

As I just said, I want to be a physical therapist. While playing sports, I have gotten injured many times. I've had to go to physical therapy for my foot and I really liked what I saw. They all looked like they enjoyed what they were doing. I saw the therapists playing with the equipment while waiting for their next client. I don’t want to have a job where I sit behind a desk all day. I want to physically help people. And with my fear of blood, I could never be a doctor/ surgeon, but I know I want to go into the medical field. I want to be able to say I just helped someone get over an injury and for them to remember that this injury isn't forever and that I will help them through the whole process.

In ten years, I hope to be in a relationship that is going the right way. I want to get married at a younger age and start a family sooner rather than later after I get married. I hope to be financially stable and independent so I can start my family without having to worry about those things all the time. I want to find someone that shares the same passions that I do. A person who loves their family, likes sports, enjoys spending time with me, and loves food.

I hope to still live close enough to my family where it is a long car ride or short flight but not too close where I feel I still live with them. I would like to visit them on holiday and have them visit me a lot.

Hopefully I am still in contact with the friends I have now, but in college I will make many more friends than I will have for the rest of my life. But most importantly, I still want to talk to the people I have now. They have all made life so much easier and I couldn’t ask for better friends.

I want to buy a two-story house with a big kitchen and a nice backyard where I can have people over and not feel squished. This house should be in a good school district with good resources around us such as grocery stores, parks, trails, beach/ water, and other things that I might find useful later in my life.