Who am I and what am I doing here?

Who am I? My name is Ashley Heacock. I am from a small town called Maplewood NJ. I have lived in the same house my whole entire life with my Mom, Dad, and older brother. When ever I am asked who I am or what my identity is I always seem to struggle to find a response. I have the privilege of not being forced to deal with my identity on a daily basis, yet it has left me without an interesting answer to this question.

 What makes up who a person is? Is it the way they look? In that case I am a young, white, female. Is it their hobbies? I have played soccer my whole entire life and more recently became a certified EMT. I enjoy being active and socializing with friends. Is it what you do? I am a student, I work at a restaurant, I am part of two clubs; NU ACES and Chaarge. Is it what you have done? As I said above I dedicated most of my life before now to soccer. I also dabbled in cheerleading, acting, and went through a skateboarding phase. In high school, I was co-leader of the pre med club and volunteered weekly at the rescue squad in my town. All of these things, and so much more, make up someone's identity. 

A big part of identity is personality. It’s a difficult task to describe one’s own personality because a lot of times what comes of it is what someone wants to be like, not how they actually are. I actually just had to take the Big Five personality test for my intro to college class. The tests results described how my mind works and it was a little too real. The test suggested that I value originality, creativity, and imagination. It also suggested that I spend a lot of time thinking about the needs and experiences of others, as well as, I sometimes perceive things that other people are not aware of. It also said that my thinking is often disturbed by unpleasant thoughts, but we’re not gonna talk about that.

What am I doing here? If you asked me this question when I was younger I would have told you I was destined to be an actor that owned a cupcake bakery part time. When I get asked this now, I make up something about getting my masters in public health with a minor is psychology so that I could work in low income communities to promote mental health awareness. Although that’s not complete BS, I truly have no clue what I want to do or why I am here. So let's not get ahead of ourselves. The only thing I truly know is that I want to help people. I’ve always been someone with a lot of empathy, sometimes too much for my own good. I also know I worked hard and am paying a lot of money to be at Northeastern so I better work my ass off to succeed and figure out exactly what I want to do.