Advanced Essay #2 Altering Personalities

The main focus of Altering Personalities is how personalities alter depending on your environment. I am proud of my scene of memory and my analyses. If I were to write this essay over again, I would relate my thesis to things that I have experienced more. Personalities alter depending upon the environment and people you are surrounded by. Some ways personalities are formed are based on how your parents act, how you are treated and are even depicted through school. As a child, I believed that people who are wealthy tend to have snobby and egotistical personalities, while people of a lower class tend to be more humble and self-aware. This is because both types of people are raised differently; a rich person is surrounded by entitlement and their parents spoiling them, while a person of a lower class is surrounded by the complete opposite; barely given anything and a hardworking mindset. Your personality relies on how you were raised either through social class, how your parents raised you or generally the environment you are surrounded by. Robert D. Putnam, the author of “Our Kids” writes, “The point isn’t just that rich kids have advantages but that their advantages are large and growing.” The idea that rich kids have better advantages demonstrates the idea that the more money you have, the more recognized you are. Money is a factor of everything; The more of it you have, the more opportunities come with it, along with a bad personality such as being snobby or egotistical. Having money and valuables is great, but what is more important is the traits of being humble and kind; things in which you cannot buy, but earn. I was constantly being surrounded by people who only cared about money, and I always had watched them show off what they had; From the newest iPhones to trips across the country and even brand new clothes. They would brag about their valuables but forgot what truly is important; hard work and kindness. In middle school, I remember my classmates who were wealthy would always be picked for certain things like student council or even starters for the softball team. I never understood why they were chosen over me because their personalities were rude and overall were negative in every aspect. But beyond my understanding, they always seemed to have better advantages along with having better things than me. Even though I wanted everything that they had, I did, in fact, have something that they did not; the trait of being humble. Although the people in my middle school were wealthy and had everything in the world, they tended to be careless with their grades. In “Our Kids” Putnam writes: “if rock star status seems improbable for a numbers-crunching academic — well, it is.” which presents the idea that you cannot have a rockstar life and a high GPA. I agree with this idea because of kids in my middle school never bothered with studying or handing in assignments. The cause of this was because all of their time and energy primarily focused on living like a rockstar, and none of that energy focused on academics. Throughout middle school, I had gotten to know one of the wealthier kids. Her name was Abby and I always stayed away from her because I did not agree with her personality. She had come up to me one day and asked if I could help tutor her in Spanish, in which I did. While talking to her, I realized that her main problem was the failure of turning in assignments; it was not the incomprehension of another language. Because Abby had always been obsessed with living like a rockstar, she did not have any interest in doing good in school. I learned about hard work at a young age because my first job was at thirteen years old. Since I had a job and made a decent amount of money, my mom decided that everything that I want no longer will be extracted from her paychecks; I had to pay for everything that I wanted. From then on, everything that I wear upon my body and if not most, then all of the items in my room are mine from working countless double shifts on weekends. Balancing school and work have become stressful at times, but by buying everything on my own, I have been shaped to be a humble, smart and hardworking person. Working and having nothing but my own money had forced me to become reliant on myself and to be wise about my money. I realized that hard work is everything, and if I wanted to experience a variety of opportunities or get myself new clothing, I would have to work hard to get myself whatever I desired. I had taught myself to be well rounded in my school, work, and managing my money, but all teachers do not teach the same subject. The kids from my middle school already had snobby and rude personalities because of growing up wealthy. In addition to this, my school prioritized wealthy people and being wealthy automatically made you popular, which fed into the already self-centered persona those kids had from solely being wealthy. Having the attention at school and at home bases the personality traits for those kids, and the result of that is not the best persona; they tend to turn out to be mean and self-centered. Their personalities changed because they were based on their surroundings; constantly getting what they want and receiving unnecessary attention from people at school. Being born into wealth generally inflicts a snobby and rude personality because of getting everything you want. But because I had been surrounded and treated like a middle- class person, I did not have the experience or opportunities to live life as a person who is wealthy. My personality has grown and I have become an independent, hard-working person because I never had gotten everything I wanted, and I was always taught that if I wanted something I would have to work hard to get it.