The Life of Bob

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The participant requested that he only be referred to as Bob within the confines of this paper. I'd like now to sum up Bob's life in the way you would see in a newspaper testimonial. Bob is a forty one year old supervisor in a well-known factory. He has a wife and three children within the confines of his nuclear family. Bob identifies as agnostic, though he was raised in the Christian faith, and does not have a specific political alliance as he feels the government today is dominated by extremes on both sides and finds the system to be broken. He lives in rural Illinois and his socio-economic status is middle class. I've always felt that those type of summaries do not properly capture who a person truly is. I feel that we have to hear a person's story to understand who they are. A turning point in his life would be when he made the decision to get his degree. Not actually getting the degree, just deciding to do so. He realized his past experience meant nothing and he had to make a change to better provide for his family. It seems a point of pride that he achieved this with no one telling him that he had to do it, but it was his own drive that pushed him toward it. A positive experience from his childhood would be when his third grade teacher, Mrs. Thomas, told him he was a very good writer Bob notes that though he has never written a book he still prides himself on his writing abilities citing being able to write an English paper the night before and still receive an 'A'. A negative childhood memory that still haunts Bob is when a girl, in junior high, that he wanted to ask to be his girlfriend rejected him in a public, and humiliating manor. He looks back now and notes that it was merely "kids being kids", never the less it e... ... middle of paper ... ...ident or desired social interaction, those aspects of his personality grew overtime. Through his life experiences and how he interpreted them he developed a way to deal with and understand the world. It seems apparent to me now that our personalities are more than our initial reactions to life, they are shaped by our experiences. Bob’s experiences shows deep and meaningful changes through out his life that I had not fully recognized before this analysis the change college had on him as well as the meeting of his wife, seemed so miniscule in my eyes, something common that most people went through. But to him it was life changing earth shattering things. I have achieved a better understanding of who bob is through this assignment I now fully understand the way people view their own lives is complicated, and highlights aspects of their lives that one would not expect.

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