Psychology final: a look at me and my personality development over the last 5 years

With a five year time line, I'm staring at my Junior year in high school. Over those few five years I have seen myself grow more than I thought I ever would or could. If you had asked me five years ago where I thought I would be as a person, I probably couldn't have even imagined being who I am today. I used to be a people pleaser, a person who dropped everything I wanted to do to make others happy and a person known to hide behind her writing journals. From that I have become a stronger, more confident and outgoing female. Though, I didn't have much of a choice in the outgoing part of that.
After high school, I moved away from my small hometown in Oregon that I had been in for eighteen years, and decided that my destination was Las Vegas, Nevada. I decided on this location because of college. I was a dance major at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. With being miles upon miles away from anyone I knew, I didn't have much of an option of becoming more outgoing: either be a hermit or get to know people. The latter of the two sounded more fun. By the time I left Las Vegas, I had more friends then I knew.

I ended up leaving UNLV five months after starting due to an injury, this is where I learned how strong of a person I am. With being a dance major, an injury takes you out of the running so I had to quit college and move back to Oregon. Before my injury, though, I had to deal with very harsh teachers. They were constantly tearing me down and telling me that I couldn't dance, then after my injury I heard that they thought I probably did it on purpose. It was really heart breaking and tore me apart emotionally. Once I got back to Oregon and got back on my feet, I started dancing again and ended up landing a few dance positions in shows and even some dance jobs for teaching. This not only built up my confidence, but made me realize how strong I really am because I didn't give up on what I wanted to do, and I didn't let others of higher authority keep me down.

I feel like a lot of things helped develop my personality. Where I grew up is a very sheltered place. Usually if you grow up here, you don't leave because it just becomes this comfort zone. This culture that I grew up in, is a very racist and judgmental culture, and I know that altered my personality because I saw how much these assumptions hurt others. I didn't want to do that. So I opened my heart and my mind, I try to take each person for who they are rather than judge them by skin, age, sex or sexual orientation.

My family showed me right from wrong, plus coping skills. With my family, religion is very much tied. My godmother is a huge part of my life since she is also my grandmother. She has helped me learn right from wrong according to the Bible, but I had a hard learning and growing experience when I told her that I wasn't going to be baptized Catholic like her. I think experiences, whether mine or ones I've witnessed, have been what affected my personality development the most.

Though I have a lot of negative moments in my life that have probably altered my trust in people or made me skeptical at times, I can't say that I would change any of them. Even the negative “episodes of life”, make me who I am and I'm proud of who I am. I am stronger than I thought I ever could be, more confident than I have ever been and happier with myself than I think a lot of people my age are with themselves. I've lost loved ones, lost friends, been in a major car accident that altered me a lot, moved multiple times and seen love destroyed, but all of it has added and mixed together to make me, me. I wouldn't want to change that for anything, and I have no want to change any of it either.