About Myself (In 13...Yes 13...paragraphs)

In creating this post, there were some people that I felt knew who I was, but did not exactly know much about me personally. Therefore, I decided to come with a few things (13 to be exact) about myself and my life (WARNING: The last item may be a little bit longer than the previous 12). Hopefully this helps people to get to know me a little bit better. Enjoy!...or at least don't be turned off by its length

I was adopted as an infant. It’s one of those things that nobody really knows or really asks about until it is brought up because I really don’t mention it that much. Even I don’t know the story behind my adoption or who my “birth parents” are, for that matter. Many people have asked if I ever want to try and find my birth parents, and to be honest I am not really too eager to find out who they are. The reason for this is because I really don’t think about that aspect of my life at all, but it is kind of interesting to hear people’s reactions to finding out that I was adopted.

I am a very competitive person when I am playing a sport and hate to lose. I follow my old club basketball coach’s philosophy of being the guy who hates to lose, not the guy who loves to win. That being said, it is rough for me to play sports in a more casual setting than in a competitive s is because setting. During intramurals, I would sometimes tend to get a little too serious about the game and yell at my teammates like I would during time playing club basketball. Even losing in a casual setting is hard on me, which is why I don’t really play sports in organized/intramurals as I did during my high school days

I absolutely love to bowl. It’s one of the few things that I have been doing for a long time (since I was about 4) and am actually decent at it. I participate in leagues throughout my days living in Lawrence and bowled two years in high school. Not being able to bowl in a league or at all because of college is a bummer, but I am kind of glad that I am not in leagues anymore. Now, I just bowl for fun with friends (and yes, I do still use my own equipment). At times, it is kind of embarrassing because of the fact that I am sometimes the only one in my group that has their own bowling equipment. However, it has been nice to find a couple of people who also bowled in the past and have their own equipment. (My weird bowling superstition: I only give high fives with my non-bowling hand)

Basketball is another sport I like to play. I played basketball as long as I have been bowling, but I got burned out by competitive basketball. The reason for this is most likely because of the fact that I am a lot better at bowling than I was in basketball (although I was considered the best defender on my club team).  Still, I miss playing with my old teammates, who I played with for six to seven years. After participating in basketball, I tend to analyze a lot of things while watching college basketball or playing intramurals.

While I do love to watch and play sports, I also love to embrace my inner nerd at time. And no, I am not the “I read a lot of books and know information about a lot of history” nerd (although I am trying to read more). I consider myself more of an “I love video games and electronics and like websites that most people would not like” nerd. I have an Xbox 360 in my apartment and a Nintendo Wii at home. I am a fan of a bunch of different genres, such as platform game (old-school Sonic the Hedgehog), role-playing games (Final Fantasy & Mass Effect), and first-person shooters (insert Halo game here). I have a tendency to find some of the oddest things interesting…such as Major League Gaming for example (See? I told you).

I am very proud of my parents and everything they have accomplished, both of my parents work two jobs to help pay for my education….two jobs EACH. I love my parents with all my heart, but it is a shame that it took me so long to appreciate all they have done. Even more impressive is the fact that they were able to do this without graduating from college. Over the past few years, I have been trying to copy their work ethic in whatever I do.

I am somewhat of a perfectionist and am very hard on myself. When something goes wrong, I always seem to look at what I did wrong, not what others did wrong. That being said, I can at times tend to beat myself over some of the little things in life. However, I have learned that I should worry about trying to do things to the best of my abilities. Even with this, it doesn’t really stop me from trying to strive for perfection.

I am an only child in my family. It’s nice but at the same time kind of dull as well. There were times during my days in high school (and even in college) where I wished that I had an older (or even a younger) sibling to talk to, since my friends are not always available (and there were some things that I were not comfortable talking to my parents about). The closest thing I had to a sibling was my German Shepherd named Sonic. Unfortunately we had to put him down (July 22, 2008). My mom took his death the hardest, but fortunately she got a new dog (a miniature pinscher by the name of Brutus)…a dog that she drove to Oklahoma and back for.

My experience at Creighton has been awesome, all of the new friends that I met here are outstanding, and it has definitely changed my life. Lawrence is a nice city, but stepping out and exploring a new city has been very beneficial. While I did have some enjoyable times during my days in high school, some of the people that I went to high school with who I thought were my close friends turned out to be not-so-close. My experience towards the end of my high school career was very negative. You could definitely say that it was part of the reason that I decided to go to Creighton in the first place; just to get a fresh start on life.

I will be very happy when I graduate from college, with probably the greatest reason being that I will be the first in my immediate family to do so. The only two relative that I know who have college degrees are my uncle (Stanford), and my cousin who now works for Verizon. The scary part is just figuring out what I am going to do after graduation. While it is exciting to know that I will be working in the “real world” soon, it will be sad to know that my time at Creighton, which has been four of the best years of my life, will be over.

I get a little irritated when people talk crap on the business school because the classes are “easier” than those in the Arts & Science school. Honestly, if I wanted an easy way out of college, then I wouldn’t have come to Creighton. I’m sorry that business is something that I am actually interested in (apology = sarcasm). Management and marketing (specifically in sports) has been an interest for me ever since my junior year in high school, and hopefully someday in the future I will be able to go into sports marketing. There are times (as with any other student) that I am disappointed with my classes, and there are some times where I wish I could get more out of some of my classes in the business school. If I had to degree in the Arts & Sciences school, it would definitely be in psychology. Some of the classes I take for my management major are psychology classes, and I have enjoyed those the most.

I get absolutely sick of people thinking that being a certain race means that you have a certain personality. There is honestly no such thing as acting “black” or “white." Personality definitely does not have a skin color, but some people, in my opinion, are too ignorant to see that. I wish stuff like this wouldn't happen, but it’s something that I sadly have to deal with.  This problem was especially true in high school, but unfortunately I did not confront anybody about this until it was too late. Probably the worst thing was having somebody look over to a table with only black people, then looking at me and saying "Why aren't you over there with them?" There was one point where everything just boiled over, which resulted in a huge funk that affected some of my friendships and really altered my view on life and really helped me to mature as a person (as weird as that sounds). This is one of the reasons why I barely keep in contact with the vast majority of people that I went to high school with.

This is pretty sad for me to say, but sometimes I feel like I have the worst luck with girls (told you that it was a sad thing for me to say). I like to think of myself as a respectful, humorous human being who is not ugly (ok, at least not THAT ugly). However, when it comes to the whole dating/relationship/girlfriend thing, I don’t have the best luck. It didn’t help that I am absolutely awful at expressing my feelings towards a girl that I liked. In the past for some reason, I felt like girls would always become friends with me but none of them would want to progress the friendship to a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. I always felt like I was missing some sort of “X-factor” trait in my personality or didn’t have the physical appearance or I was too much of a “nerd” and not really much of a “macho” person. In the past I would also tend to look at other couples around me and sometimes tell myself “Why can’t that be me?” or “Why would she pick him?!” Then when I would finally meet a girl that I liked and would be rejected after asking her out, things were even worse for me. I would tend to dwell on the issue for far too long, which would put me in a terrible mood and affect my personal life as well and, sadly, my schoolwork. Safe to say, I sometimes felt like a train wreck.

            Fortunately, I have been able to not get bummed out completely whenever these things do happen, and just learn from the experience and move on. It still hurts sometimes to look around and see couples holding hands or talking with each other and thinking why you aren’t feeling the same experience they are. I will admit, it even still sometimes can put me in a sour mood or a even a saddened mood. Even with this, however, I have just learned that I can only be myself and just look for ways that I can better myself as a person. If I find someone that truly likes me for who I am (even with the lack of muscles or how much of a massive nerd I can be at times), then that will be all well and good. I am confident though that I will actually have things go in my favor someday...hopefully sooner rather than later