Overview  

I have told myself and others more than a few times over all these years that I feel like I have lived a multitude of lives.  Fresh out of high school, I did the traditional thing and went straight on to college for the first time, choosing very quickly as my major Psychology.  Coming from a small midwestern Illinois town, there at the university is where I truly began to feel a sense a freedom, self-reliance, and maturing identity even if my penchant for quiet and solitary introspection (almost to a fault) had been apparent long beforehand.  This first period of academics is what invigorated my wide-ranging fascinations with the social sciences, literature, history, philosophy, religions and languages, thereby also paving the path to my German studies and experiences studying abroad.  As is apparent from the reflections that follow in this showcase, that year in Berlin was for me the watershed in my personal and intellectual development, although the irony of that is not lost on me considering the unforeseen difficulties academically it ended up creating as well.  Nevertheless, if not for this year, I suspect I would never have taken the initiative to travel as extensively in Europe as I did thereafter, nor would I have applied to teach English as a Foreign Language in Hungary and stayed there for 2 years, nor would I have felt the intense necessity upon my return to the states to move here to Chicago, nor then to feel the confidence in my expertise and strength of experience to become a Training Coordinator for my company or ultimately find myself as a student once again at DePaul University in the Computer Sciences, charting a new intellectual and career path.  The point here is that each of these periods of my life has had a mental focus and an emotional character so unique and so eclectic that I stare back in astonishment at the breadth of these ‘lives’ I have led, tied to so many geographic places and cultures as well.

Recurring Challenges and Key Strengths        

Of course, given this adventurous, headstrong, willful approach to my passions and projects, many of which involved adapting to new environments that were as exhilarating as they were confusing or daunting, the likelihood of encountering high-stress points was that much greater.  In hindsight I would venture to guess my boldness in choosing such daunting projects and surroundings was my way of (perhaps over-) compensating for or reacting to an extreme sense of social anxiety and introversion that I always worry has hampered my ability to move forward or progress in life at times or project to others more freely the person I wish to be.  Being a gay man certainly added a level of complexity to all this introversion and shyness that not everyone would have to contend with in their lives.  However, even in balancing all these stress points in my self-image or occasional low points in self-confidence, I have been able to cultivate and refine so many more traits and characteristics of which I am extraordinarily proud.  Whether regarding language, human behaviors, logical arguments and debate, written or verbal expression, social dynamics, or being a student and then becoming the teacher myself, I often see patterns and structures of thought quite intuitively and quickly.  I feel this allows me to see the core of situation or a problem in a way that I am able find my way to solutions and outcomes in a much more satisfying and generally edifying manner.  Moreover, I have become greatly accustomed both in professional and personal life to listening to others, without judgement, without impatience, with authenticity and an undivided attention that is far more difficult to put into active practice than most people realize.  All this has helped me approach life with the kind of open mind and compassion that I strive to find and hopefully encourage in others.

Current Goals and Focus Area

Given this background, clearly, I am accustomed to momentous changes in my life and adapting accordingly, determined to approach every experience from the perspective of what ultimately is being revealed to me by that experience, however expected or unexpected.  For the most part all those life changes were towards a conscious purpose: understanding the world around me better and considering thoroughly my place in it from multiple perspectives before settling on what I wanted my place and my important work in fact to be in this world.  My current goals and professional endeavors have followed suit, if in a rather ‘full circle’ manner.  Alongside my abiding fascination with cultural studies, travel, the humanities, and social sciences one other interest of mine has remained constant since my parents brought home our first desktop PC as a kid:  computers.  Information and computer technology has only taken on greater and greater prominence in my life for as long as I can remember and more than that, they are aspects of my world for which I have always had an innate affinity and propensity to learn.  Therefore, when I say my current life goals have in a sense brought me full circle, I mean that I will finally be explicitly exploring an area of my intellectual and skilled development, computer science, that until now had always tended to remain more so in the background,   Yet even here, my choice of concentration within the computer sciences speaks to the common threads exhibited in my life’s work in that I will be focusing on programming languages and software architecture.  Once again, I observe my desire to always have in view the ‘bigger picture’ and to become adept at the fundamentals of whatever discipline or task to which I am applying myself.

Insights and Academic Outcomes

In writing all the analysis documents that are a part of this portfolio and brainstorming as extensively as I did through the entire Reflective Learning process, I have realized exactly how extensive and wide ranging my learning experiences have been up to this point, whether academic, professional, or personal.  Too often I have taken for granted the store of knowledge and skill I have accumulated when I would wish to proactively cultivate these talents so they become more natural and apparent not only in my own self-view but also, just as importantly, in how I project these strengths and passions to others as a part of my whole identity. 

Because this is my first quarter at DePaul and after so long a hiatus from any academic studies altogether, I have had to remember or ‘re-learn’ what my best learning practices and techniques are for college.  Thankfully and to no great surprise, those mental habits returned to me quickly and effortlessly, enhanced ever further by the depth of life experience since.  However, since I will be working and studying both this time around, I need to make sure I strike the right balance with each.  This is what had me most nervous before beginning studies at DePaul. Yet as we approach the end of this quarter I can confidently say that I have learned a variety of time management skills that have served me so far very well:  setting aside blocks of time usually in mornings to write and complete assignments or readings, being very careful not to overwhelm myself with work activity that would be too taxing on my mental capacities for completing schoolwork, making myself very familiar as early as possible with all class materials and tools in order that I have the best view of overall class goals, and finally making sure all avenues of communication are open with professors, peers and university resources so that I always am reassured I have the support I need here. 

Fortunately, acting upon all these skills in the context of online learning at DePaul, even despite my initial nervousness, has turned out to be easier and smoother than I had anticipated.  However, when all is said and done, the core of my studies and my work now will be all the stronger, bolder and more nuanced because of the vast array of experiences described in these reflective essays and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to revisit all of them and share them with my peers, all of whom having had life experiences just as rich, diverse and rewarding and through which I am sure a great many other self-discoveries were made.