One of the most important journeys in life is our education. Education can be defined as the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university. This concept shapes how we are going to treat people in the future, and most importantly what kind of person we are going to be in life. There are different kinds of educations but, like mentioned before, one of the most important is school education. In school children learn academically but they also learn socially. On this place is where a child learns for the first time how to socialize and how to treat others.

My school experience was one of the best experiences of my life, but at the same time one of the worst. Academically, I learned a lot and it has really helped me on my university experience and on my journey to become a professional. Socially, it wasn’t that good. I didn’t have a lot of friends and I was bullied all the time because of that. This made me feel awful, like I was less that everybody and couldn’t be myself around them just because I wasn’t enough. Another thing that was wrong and was going on at high school was drug trade. This is completely illegal and teachers acted like they didn’t know but it was really because they didn’t want to get involve and form a big problem. All this made me feel scared and not really secure around my school campus since there were dangerous things going on around it and nobody really cared.

As I grew up, I understood better what was really happening and felt better about myself. I realized bullying and drug trade was due to not giving a proper social education in school. Teachers and administration didn’t give importance to the social education and didn’t correct or teach little children how they were supposed to be and treat others. In other words, the idea that school is an institution for academic education only was out of hand because children were learning at an early age to be a bad person and teachers didn’t do anything about it. Because of this, I realized I was always enough and children treated me badly just because they weren’t taught properly and always saw this as a normal thing. This made me feel proud of the person I became and how I never treated anyone badly no matter how they treated me.

Recently, I went to my old school to pick up my little sister and I noticed a couple of changes. As I was walking through the halls there were posters with “NO BULLYING” and “DRUG-FREE ZONE” signs all around. I also noticed a vibe full of happiness and respect among students. I asked my sister how did this happen and she told me that last semester administration realized they needed to do something about this and created a class that every student needs to take that has to do with your values as a person. In other words, it teaches children how to treat others, how to be a good person in life, and how to socialize respecting others. Also, from that day on, all students needed to do a drug test annually and if the results were positive they handled the situation educating them and showing them why this is wrong. This made me feel very happy since my sister was now in a danger-free school in which she was going to have no bulling or illegal things going on around her.

Utopia can be defined as an imagined place or a state of things in which everything is perfect. A place where the social justice is achieved as well as the principles that could guarantee it. In the reading “Welcome to Utopia” by Trent Dalton a group of people create a perfect place called Edenhope where they separate themselves from all the problems and bad people in life. When I went to my old school recently I really felt I was on a real Utopia. I felt that they finally created a perfect place for students in which they all felt loved by others and by themselves. Everybody felt like they belonged and all social problems were left behind. It was a place in which social justice for students was finally achieved.

If we compare the place Edenhope and how it was created with my new changed school it has a lot of similarities. We can observe this through some quotes Steve Quinto says. First of all, when he says “Paradigm keeps shaping your education, it’s really tough to resist the paradigm” this can be compared to the education in the old school I was at because the paradigm or idea that school education was only for academical matters was shaping children’s social education since they weren’t taught values. We can also compare the quotes “We don’t want people who are trying to escape themselves” and “We could not go on participating on it” to how administration and teachers realized they needed to do something about bullying and drug dealing. This took them to create a different and better place just as this took Steve Quinto to create Edenhope. Further on through the story, he also mentions “This is the birth of beauty, this is the birth of dreams” and “Really, Edenhope is all about kids, and their future. Those who grow up with their dreams hold sacred.” In here we can observe that Edenhope can really be compared to the new school because like it says, this is the place where kids start having dreams and it’s up to teachers to educate them to be good respectful people along the way.

In conclusion, social education is really important for a child’s developing. It’s crucial that children learn at an early age to have values, to be respectful to others and most importantly to feel comfortable with who they are. It was really amazing for me to see this change my school gave and all the good feedback this had on students and teachers. For me, a place like the new changed school that has no bullying was like an utopian dream, something perfect but impossible. It makes me really happy to see it come true and to see how happy and comfortable my sister and all the recent students are.

Dalton, T. (2010). Welcome to Utopia. Austin: University of Texas Press.

As we travel through life, we face a lot of experiences that shape who we are and how we see the world. Sometimes the world sees us in a way we don’t, and this can cause a lot of struggles and problems in our life. This can be due to our gender, our race, our past, our family, our citizenship, etc. All of these factors mentioned before shape our identity and cause stereotypes in a way we can’t control it. Consequently, we are also shaped by subjectivities such as colonizers and dreamers.

Personally, I felt that people saw me in a different way than how I see myself when I went to UCLA in California for a medicine summer camp. I have always seen myself a as a petite girl who is a very dedicated student, daughter, dancer, and a loyal friend. Also, a girl who has goals and because of them is very perseverant to reach her dreams. Nevertheless, when I went to the summer camp my classmates saw me in a very different way and this was all due to Latina stereotypes. When I told them I live in Puerto Rico, they started asking me how I got the opportunity to go to that camp if people in Puerto Rico are poor and how I talked English without an accent being a Latina. Also, boys saw me different than all of the other white girls in the classroom. They started to talk to me as if I was a slut or an easy girl, they told me to dance for them in a sexy loud way “just as Latina do it”. But, the one thing that really shocked me was when they asked me why I wanted to be a doctor if Latina girls were better for being sexy cooks and sexy maids. With this experience, I learned that Latino shaming is real and happening now a days in the United States. Even though I defended myself and tried to explain them I am a real American citizen too and because of this nothing different from them and from the other white girls, I felt really humiliated. It’s awful to feel the role of stereotyping in this post-colonial era. I can say this was the first time I felt called out from the world, and I realized these stereotypes shape my identity in a way I can’t control it.

My family and my past are other factors that have really shaped my perspectives on my experiences. With the word “past” I refer to my grandmother who had a very tough life but never lost hope and always tried to be happy and positive. First of all, when she was a baby she lived in New York and was thrown in a garbage can because her mom didn’t want her. Because of this, she grew up with foster parents, but they died when she was 18 and since she was alone she moved to Puerto Rico to start a new life. In Puerto Rico, she married my grandfather and had my mom and my aunt. Years later, my grandfather was killed and she needed to raise her girls all alone. Even though she lived this tough life, she was always a very positive, perseverant woman who never gave up or lost hope on anything. She is the real definition of a dreamer who finally reached her dream of having the calm, peaceful family she has nowadays. She has taught my family and me that if something goes wrong just stay positive and never lose hope because it always gets better. Thanks to her, I am a very positive perseverant girl who has a lot of dreams and will never give up on them. This has definitely shaped my perspectives on my experiences and my perspective of how I see the world.

In conclusion, a lot of factors in my life have shaped who I am and how I see the world. This has been due to my past, my family and all the dreams I had that turned into goals. Also, how others perceive me and how I have deal with this has been critical in finding who I really am as a subject in the world. Thanks to all of these factors that have shaped me and have taught me different things, I can say I see the world in a better way. No matter the stereotypes or the humiliations I pass, I will never stop being a positive girl who never gives up on anything and will forever be perseverant for her dreams.