For my Action Project for Endurance we had to create an autobiography. This was the first AP I have done outside of school because of this virus. In my opinion it didn't change much and if anything. I found myself with more time to do it and really trying to focus on improving writing. This relates to Endurance because Autobiography I talked about a few challenges I have endured and grew from over the years.
In the cold, dark winter of 2001, I was born. I’ll bet a lot of people already know I’m not originally from America, but I’m not sure how many actually know where I’m from. I was born in Ust Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan, near the Siberian border. In the winter it gets colder than an icebox, but in summer it’s hotter than spices in the American South. I do not have any memories of this mysterious land. Even though my parents exposed me to Kazakh culture throughout my childhood, being an immigrant was never really an issue for me. I never found a reason to think about where I was from because it just didn’t relate to the life I was living in America. And I think that’s fine personally, because I don’t identify with Kazakh customs like eating goats. That sounds about as appealing to me as eating a worm.
Growing up was pretty nice. Our family was financially comfortable, and I was able to go to a preschool that was about a block from where we lived. That’s where I ended up meeting a few of my neighborhood friends that I still hang with today. My parents have always wanted to expose me to a bigger world and not just keep me around Chicago. We often took trips to Indiana because we have a place there. We also traveled to California to see family and to the island of Bermuda to see family there as well. In fact, I now have Bermudian citizenship. We have traveled to Canada and Italy, and when I was about five years old, we visited Ireland. I remember Ireland very well and what I remember is - it’s cool. Through my grandparents, I have Irish citizenship so I have a lot of different passports. My parents want me to be an international man, but I just like Indiana.
Earlier I referred to the organic farm we used to own in Indiana. It was a place in nature with colors as vibrant as a paint store. I think our farm showed me a very different side of America. You know in life it’s pretty much city people and country people, and I’ve been lucky enough to experience them both. I like some aspects of one (the friends) and I really like some aspects of the other (the freedom). I think our traveling and experiencing different countries has without a doubt opened my mind and shown me there are a lot of other cultures and people out there that you just don’t hear about so much.
I remember one challenge I faced when I was at the farm: it was learning to properly shift the tractor because tractors have two different gear clusters, and it’s as confusing as learning Chinese. There are low and high gears for towing and speed and you have to learn carefully how to position each one in a certain spot. At a young age, I feel like that’s kind of a challenge to remember exactly how to shift something each time, but I figured it out around the age of seven or eight. That’s when I started driving the tractor around our old farm like a race car at Indy. It kind of got me into farming and into the idea of having my own farm at some point. At first driving a tractor was something I had to learn and it was extremely overwhelming, but with more training it became as natural as breathing.
I feel a mental challenge I’ve had to overcome was my going to Mount Carmel freshman year. The only things I liked there were gym class and the French fries. But the mental aspect of having to get up and go 40 minutes south to an area and a school that I really disliked was tough. I had some friends there, but it was the distance between the school and me that really did it in. Also, the issue with those friends was that they mostly lived in far away suburbs, and it was hard to meet up with them. So I just stuck with the same group of friends I’ve had since sixth grade and that hasn’t been a bad thing I would think, but that’s just why that occurred.
One of the main reasons I transferred to GCE Lab School is because of its proximity to our house. I couldn’t have asked for a more convenient school and I know that even when I don’t agree with some of the things at GCE, at least it’s really close by. For me that’s a big plus. It has made the mental aspect of going to school a lot less stressful. Having to wake up early and catch a bus is now nonexistent. I feel like the school is still school, but instead of a 40 minute bus ride, it’s a 10 minute walk.
Over the years I’ve been interested in war planes and flight. Since my uncle is a pilot, he showed me a little bit about that lifestyle. I’ve been around planes from a very young age, and I remember going to see my uncle’s planes in his hangar in Boston. There’s a picture of me in one of those planes at about four years old. It ignited my interest in aviation like a turbo fan engine on a 737. When I was there again at eight, I got to fly in his helicopter. We flew around the Boston/Connecticut area. Even though the experience was cool, the heat that day was like the surface of the sun. At that point, I was a big fan of helicopters but not so much airplanes. As more time progressed and there were more trips and more airplane rides, I couldn’t get over the turbulence of an airplane. Then, eventually something clicked and I instinctively knew that turbulence is really nothing to even bat an eye at. I mean that’s what just happens when you're 30,000 feet up - you hit different air pockets and that’s what does it. Now turbulence is a breeze. After I got over my discomfort with it, I really started thinking more about a professional pilot career and how I can do that.
About a year ago, I went on a flight with a guy named Butch. That was the first time I’ve actually flown anything myself because he let me take the stick and control the plane. It was a very cool experience, even though it was a Cessna 150 and we were probably only going about 120 miles per hour up there. This was not super fast for an airplane, but it was still really exciting to see how I was making this vehicle in the sky rotate and do turns. This experience sparked my interest back up like a barbeque lighter. Then, when I toured colleges later that year I started thinking about colleges that had flight programs. I might want to continue on to become a commercial pilot but I also just might want to get an instrument license just to be able to fly a plane.
Another influential fact is that my grandfather met Orville Wright who was the first person ever to fly a plane. I really think that’s a cool thing that not many other people can say - that their grandfather met the inventor who flew the first plane. I really think this kind of pushes me to try to go for this goal. So in a way, I kind of look up to past pilots and my grandfather who was a machinist and liked to work on mechanical things. He was also interested in aviation like I am and he had many books and small statues of planes around his house. Every year in the summer when we go back to visit, I end up reading his aviation books.
As you can probably assume by this point I am pretty sure I want to become a pilot. I think it would be an exhilarating career to be able to take people from coast to coast in under six hours. I think another really impactful flight career would be to fly a DC-10 tanker. These are the planes you see dropping chemicals on bush fires to put them out, which can save millions of dollars in damage and human lives as well. So maybe I would pursue that as a noble goal for my life.
