Creative project

        At the beginning of this class I was unsure on what a coming of age experience actually was but as the semester went on and we read the course books and articles explaining their own coming of age experiences I became more aware on what it actually was to have a coming of age moment. I chose these two photos because it was during a specific time in my life where I was away from my family, away to college, in a new state, and also experiencing living on my own for the first time. These pictures mean a lot to me the first picture with the championship rings. Winning a national championship was my first major achievement in my life. The picture with my friend it brings back a lot of memories that I had living in Illinois and it also represents the new people I was able to meet and make dealing with my own problems easier.

         I would first like to begin explaining about the picture of me and my friends because this was my freshmen year in college. I was 18 years old just graduated from high school and I was moving out of my mother’s house not just down the block or like 20 minutes away I was moving 6 hours away from my mom and my family into to area I have never been before in my life. During this big move I will have to admit I was nervous, anxious, scared and all of the above but I also had the courage to look deep inside myself and make it through this period of my life. Even though I was terrified of the new life I would be starting on the inside but on the outside I had my wall up to hide the fear of getting older and maturing in the process.  I pretended everything was just fine the boy code that William Pollack described in the article Inside the world of boys: behind the mask of masculinity. Over time I stopped hiding from the fears I had and embraced because everyone I knew was going through the exact same thing I was. William Pollack explains why I wasn’t able to express my emotions about my situation in another passage about the two research points. “The first reason is the use of shame in the toughening-up process by which its assumed boys need to be raised to feel ashamed of their feelings, guilty especially about feelings of weakness, vulnerability, fear and despair.” This applies to me word by word because I didn’t want to share my fears with anyone and be considered less of a man because I had fears of beign without my family. “The second reason is the separation process as it applies to boys, the emphasis society place on a boy’s separating emotionally from his mother at an unnessarily young age, usually by the time the boys are six years old.” These picture are important to me for many reasons but what I remember most is my friend Xavier who I talked to when at school because he was away from his family, friends, and in a new state just like me. That’s when I realized that’s its ok to be afraid of what the future holds because who isn’t and I would have never known this unless I expressed my feelings about it and get it off my chest.