#24

I am an incredibly lucky person in many ways, and although I have felt misunderstood plenty of times, I have never felt discriminated against or misunderstood to the point of anxiety while on the Wheelock campus. This may partly be because I do not spend much time here, and it is most certainly also because I am a White, middle-class girl with a generally liberal viewpoint, who grew up in a suburb 30 minutes away without traffic  and loves children to no end. I do not strongly affiliate with any religion, and although I most closely associate with being agnostic, I am not very attached to that either. The things that most define my identity are the people I love, and perhaps I might be judged on the insanity of my friends and family if I brought them to be paraded around school. It is generally impossible for me to be judged on the people I spend the most time with, however, because these are the people from my hometown, my best friends from high school who are as much family to me as my family is, and of course my family members themselves. Although I live on campus, I go home nearly every weekend, and the time I do spend on campus I often commit to schoolwork, which in many ways leaves me detached from the Wheelock community. While here I do not feel detached however, I actually quite love it, but I separate who I am here and this environment almost entirely from my world at home. I think in a way this leaves no opportunity for discrimination, because while here I am more of a mold of myself from the side of friendliness and academic achievement that I am the wild child of back home.