This is Real This is Me - Julia Zaucha
Hi, my name is Julia Zaucha. Fun fact: according to "How Many of Me - Census Search", there is only one person (me) with my full name in the USA, so who am I? - One of a kind, thank you very much.
Although I have current residence in Boston, I like to identify who I am with where I am originally from. I was born in Chicago, Illinois and originally lived above a bar until my family moved to a northwestern suburb about 35 minutes outside of the city. I come from a decent sized town and received a very good public school education.
Early on in my education, I was not a huge fan of school and would often pretend to be sick to go home. I would only justify this behavior as I used to be a very shy kid but once I was exposed to sports I really cracked out of my shell. I was your average kid who played all the sports possible such as basketball, softball, swimming, soccer, tennis, and dance. I made a bunch of friends but I chose to focus on softball. Ever since around maybe 8 I would always say how I was a softball player. I used that trait to describe me for the next 10 years of my life. And ever since college started I know that I can't say that because I no longer am playing softball (maybe I might join the school team but we will see). So if you were to ask me who I am I would have to think harder than ever because although I will never forget it, it is not who I am anymore.
So rather than discussing who I am, I think it is more important to discuss how I got here? I mean I always knew (at least since sophomore year of HS) that I wanted to study in Boston. I toured Northeastern and got "the feeling", aka when I felt that I knew I had to go here. That same year, I also finalized my education path and realized I wanted to study medicine and chose pre-med (health science) as my major. But what actually allowed me to be accepted? Was it my test scores that were able to get me accepted into this school? Was it my school involvement? Was it my community involvement? Was it my college essay about G-Eazy? I like to say that all of these reasons combined made me acceptable to get to this school.
So now that I am finally getting all of my stuff together I am starting to figure everything out. I think this year (freshman year) was an important time of rediscovering who I am/ want to be because I used to fall into the role I made myself in high school, but now that I am doing different things, I am also a different person. And by that, I am saying that I genuinely feel different than I did last year and I feel as if I am a more confident and self-aware individual than I have ever been in the past. I feel as if the opportunity to redefine myself is one of the most freeing experiences I have had and the freedom I am given due to the college experience really allows me to explore all of the possibilities.
I can definitely say that who I am is never going to be a constant identity, thus meaning that I never want to have a static time in my life where I can only fall under a specific category of adjectives. So who I am can never truly be defined because nobody nor I will know who I ever actually truly am. I could tell you the things I like or the things I am involved in but who I am today will never be the same every day, and I vibe with that.
Based on that, I could tell you today that I am overall a really relaxed person and I really go with the flow, but I find it is very important to stress my ability to be assertive and advocate for myself. I am genuinely a very positive individual and if someone were to reach out I would be responsive and respectful. I love interacting with people and enjoy life as it comes. There is more to me (of course) but I don't think just one blog post would get to the bottom of it; so as for now, here was a very simplified outline of who I am.
Hey Julia! I definitly relate to your situation with softball. I have played soccer my whole entire life and that was always my first go to fun fact during ice breakers. It's strange now to speak of my soccer playing as passed tense. I playes 3 to 4 times a week in high school, year round, I traveled for soccer, all of my friends played soccer, it was a big part of who I was. As you mentioned, now that I am not playing soccer I have the ability to reinvent myself. College is the perfect place to do that. I think it is important to try new things to discover who we are. By doing this, I too realize I am very different from who I was a year ago, which is amazing. Someone's identity is always changing and, as you said, noone will actually know who they truly are. I also find that I learn new things about myself from experiences and people I would never expect to.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of never just having a constant identity because having a constant identity means staying in one place. It means never learning and evolving from their experiences. People with a fixed personality are so fixed on their perception of themselves that they refuse to allow themselves to change. These type of people are too scared to venture out and be someone new. They are too afraid because they don't know if what they'll find is an improvement or a failure. I hope that I don't become like this in the future. Personally, I have spent a lot of time trying to figure myself out. I am so tired of not knowing who I am that I have tried to just stop evolving and try to figure who I am at one specific period of time. What I didn't realize is that by stopping, I have stopped myself from really experiencing the world around me. I have prevented myself from being influenced by everything around me and that is not good. It is a waste of time trying to figure myself out because in the end, by the time I have figured it out, my identity will have changed. Even though high school was less than a year ago, I have realized that I am no longer the same person. There are some things that overlap with high school me but otherwise, I have grown from my experiences in college and have become someone new.
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