Strong Reputations

One’s reputation goes hand in hand with their identity. Individuals have several identities. They are students, employees, daughters and sons, friends, roommates, etc. These identities help us develop our reputations, and these reputations in turn affect the way we behave. I believe I have developed the strongest reputation within the domain of my family because of the length of time I have maintained this relationship (not by choice, of course) as well as the quality of this relationship that’s been cultivated.

Naturally, I began my relationship with my family when I was born to my mother. As a baby, I don’t really believe I had control over the kind of reputation I was developing for myself. And if I did, I certainly don’t remember it. The circumstances of me being a baby sort of unfolded and took on a life of its own. It was when I began making more rational choices with a riper memory that allowed me to determine what kind of reputation I was going to have with them. My family began to know me and began to see me in a certain way through my decisions and actions. For example, the kind of food I would eat, or what I asked for Christmas, or the toys I played with, or the books I read.

Growing older, I found that I was beginning to gain more control over my actions and decisions. I did well in school and received good grades. I was always well behaved for the most part, and even on the quiet side sometimes. I was very respectful to my elders. I hated vegetables. I was very creative. I was also sort of a tomboy. For some reason, everyone believed I was going to become a doctor when I was growing up. I don’t quite remember if that was my fault for being an overachieving child, or my parents’ fault for setting that path up for me.

Everyone was a different person than they were ten years ago. I have learned a lot about what aspects of my reputation I wanted to drop and what aspects I wanted to keep. For example, going to college helped maintain and enhanced the characteristic of smartness that my family saw in me. However, I am certainly no longer a tomboy. I am certainly still very respectful of my elders. But, one of the more amusing childhood features I’ve dropped was my hatred of vegetables. I believe when I came home for Thanksgiving after my first year in college and ate a salad in front of my family that the whole world collapsed in awe. It was difficult to convince my family that I didn’t hate vegetables as much anymore. My godmother thought I was physically ill.

I don’t believe I have ever cashed my reputation in, or abandoned it altogether in favor of some immediate gain. I have never been put in that sort of situation before. The closest I have been to that sort of position was probably when I failed my first course and began to consider dropping out of school. My education is a large part of my reputation in my family right now, because I am the first in my generation to attend a university (I’m the oldest of all my cousins). But other than that, there’s never been an occasion for me to do anything of the sort.