In reference to the content in The Most Important Lesson No One Ever Taught Me (this is one of the choices you have for your book club reading, it is not necessary to read the book to understand the assignment) choose 2 people who live life in a way similar to how you want to live life. This is a very broad interpretation. Simply put, find someone you admire, respect, want to know better, find interesting etc. Ask each individual, “How did you get to where you are today.” (That is the only question you start with and see where the conversation goes…these are very informal, however the write up should not be informal) . Write a paper, which includes the following information: Brief summary of interviewee #1’s background information- DO NOT USE LAST NAMES. A summary of what you learned (take home messages) from interviewee #. Brief summary of interviewee #2’s background information-DO NOT USE LAST NAMES. A summary of what you learned (take home messages) from interviewee #2 EXAMPLE OF ANOTHER STUDENTS ESSA To resonate, according to the Merrium Webster dictionary, is “to have a particular meaning for someone; to affect or appeal to someone in a personal or emotional way”. This assignment and the way that I choose to think about it, the way the conversations progressed and I talked to the individuals I choose, clearly became for me a lesson of resonance from the heart and not the intellect, hence the title and so it is with that understanding that I introduce my dear friends and how they got where they are today. Julia, otherwise known as BFF: Julia and I met when we were 19 years old, both attending UC Santa Cruz and both finding ourselves in Women Studies 101 with Candace West. Although we came from very different backgrounds, her from the affluent Marin County and me from the very working class Sacramento County, we quickly became best friends and have remainded close to this day some 25 years later. Julia is a non-conformist, having come from an artist mother who owned a small retail art store in downtown San Anselmo and entrepreneurial father who started a hydroponics company when no one even knew what that was. She was challenged as a child to think and act outside of the norm, to be an individual. In highschool, after 3 years of trying to be like everyone else in middle school, she decided to join the ‘nerdy’ drama crowd and to partcipate in live theater via the local Renaissance and Dickens Faires. After high school, Julia attended UCSC (where we met) and then UC Santa Barbara where she received her Master’s degree in Sociology. Although she’s held the typical 9-5 job in licensing and once in sales, Julia firmly believes that you can make a life our of your life’s passions and has as a result, not worked in a 9-5 for several years now, choosing instead to concentrate on her art and writing. She recently published her first novel Ice Will Reveal and is in the process of writing the second in that series of books. Julia also heads a project called ‘Fly Your Freak Flag High’ which encourages individuals via the arts to think about and really celebrate the things about theirselves that make them unique and different. It’s her opinion that in celebrating our unique bits, we can beat down the oppression that often happens because of the differences (you’re too fat, ugly, brown, tall, smart, artsy, etc) and really come together as a community. “How did you get to where you are today” is an interesting question for her to answer, especially knowing it’s coming from me and I’ve known her for so long, but I just sit and listen. “Well what do you want to know”? “I want to know what makes you uniquely you and how you got to that thought process, that place.” So she starts to talk and in a way, my very eloquent friend has a problem explaining because it’s so near and dear to her heart. I guess it was a combination of the water shed moments, when I was diagnosed with cancer at 22, being at UC Santa Cruz, going to Burning Man, getting older and realizing that possibilities open up for self-acceptance and being surrounded by people who both encourage you and give you the opportunity to ‘Fly Your Freak Flag High’. Having the safety and encouragement to try out different things when you are younger, realizing you liked the nerdy, non-cool things and defending those things as you got older that makes you realize that with all that practice and talk, you really want those things more than just being ‘normal’. She pauses and says “practices, lots and lots of practice, my friend”. Tammy: Though I’ve not known Tammy for as long as I’ve known Julia, we became fast friends four years ago when I moved to the bay and began working with her at Mindjet. She’s the youngest girl of a family of five children born and raised outside of Denver, CO. Her father is second generation Mexican American, who fought to make it in to and graduate from college. For most of Tammy’s childhood, he a well respected principal in the town where she grew up. His mild mannered principal status at work didn’t transition to his home where he took his anger out on his wife and children, both verbally and physically on a regular basis. He pushed his children, including Tammy, to overperform in everything that they did and where their grades weren’t fantastic, he pushed them even harder in their athletics to make sure that they would at least get some funding for college. For most of Tammy’s childhood, she described her family as poor. Tammy moved to California in her twenties after college where she was a starter on the women’s basketball team. She had no job and no place to live but she just knew she needed to get away from Colorado and her still abusive father. Tammy’s first 4 months in Marin County were spent living in her car, showering at the local Y, eating as little as she possibly could because she was flat broke. Even after getting a job, she still lived hand to mouth for years until got a job at Auto Desk where she spent 4 years then took her sabbatical and decided to quit entirely so she could go back to school to get her BA in Archeology. After earning her BA, doing some archeological work in AU, Spain and South America and returning to work in the bay, Tammy is again at Auto Desk. Only now she co-founded a cross-fit clothing company ‘on the side’ with two friends and does cross fit 5-6 days a week only one year after having her right knee replaced. Tammy has just as hard a time putting words to how she got to where she is today that Julia does. She wants to attribute it all to hard work when we first started talking but as we continue on with the conversation, it’s all about passion and heart. She has an extreme passion for life and what it can bring. She will tell you that every single day is a gift that she gladly accepts, that there is no reason to complain about what you’ve been given because someone has always been given something worse and that we can all make the decision to be happy about our lives or not. She chooses to be happy. When I ask her about pushing herself to the limits, blowing her knee out at such a young age (she’s 42) and having it replaced, having a full time job and running a company on the side at the same time as working out and spending time with friends and family she just chuckles and says ‘what else are we here for dude?’ Life is meant to be lived, those things make her happy and yes, she is busy and sometimes tired but it is all worth it in the end. Her mantra, though she’s just said this outloud recently and is slightly embarrassed about it, is ‘be better than the next guy’. She knows that comes from the intense pressure put on her by her father when she was a child but she knows that in her adult life, the meaning is much different. She doesn’t think badly of the next guy, she just needs a measure to push herself to and beyond and that’s an easy measure – the next guy – the person that in 5 minutes she will be cheering on to push more weight, run faster and try harder. Again, it’s all about the heart. My friends, they are amazing women and I am blessed to learn from them.
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