Dear Anita

Thank you for your encouragement that helps make my life meaningful. I am grateful to have an inspirational friend like you who gives me strength to keep working on becoming a better person each day. My career class professor is assigning students to do self-reflections on the struggles they have faced in life and how it has helped, impacted or changed their lives. I find these self-reflection discussion board questions insightful because they allow me to wonder about my flaws and work on improving myself. The students reply to other students giving each other advice about what they posted and I find it interesting to read about the challenges that other students have because it makes me feel less alone. The career class is mostly about working on building the students up so they will have meaningful careers in their life, and to get students to think whether their life’s path will truly make them happy. The career class made me reflect on what I felt was holding me back from living as who I want to be and lead me to question who I was as a person. The professor asked students to think about who they are as a person outside of outside/external factors. Because if a person tries to seek happiness in the world but isn’t happy on the inside, then they won’t find happiness. So the professor made students question whether the career path they are considering is really who they are and who they want to be. The professor asked students to think about themselves as a unique soul and see who they were on the inside and think about what would happen if they realized that their career path wasn’t their framework for happiness. The professor said to the students that if they allowed a career path to be their framework and external things to define who they are, then when that external thing or career path doesn’t work out, what will be the thing that keeps people living? Being in this class made me realize that I needed to find myself within and not from the expectations of the world. I began to question myself and who I was as a person and wondered who I really was and I found that I didn’t really have all the pieces. The professor says that people’s personalities are so entrenched in who the world wants them to be that they lose parts of themselves and only by taking time to listen to their heart can they truly see what they want on the inside. So I began to think about my career path as a genetic researcher and wonder why I was pursuing it and whether it was the only foundation that I had to live for and I started thinking about how I would feel if that career path changed. I found that I couldn’t really think about how I would feel, I believed that as the science advances I could adapt with it in my research. I began to realize that I wanted to become a genetic researcher because I wanted to study DNA structure and genes in hopes of possibly figuring out if certain genes could be changed without adverse effects on an individual. Because if genes in the DNA structure could be changed, perhaps transgender people could get the genes that regulate biological sex characteristics to be changed so their bodies will develop biologically into the gender they identify as and this may avoid years of gender dysphoria. I think that this is why genetic research appeals to me so much because I want to help the transgender community. I think that the career path of genetic researcher is an expression of my authentic self. I also know that being out in nature and practicing Wicca, learning science and working on Buddhism spiritual growth meditations and also being  a guy is part of my inner self. I am not sure if anything else fits and as I explore myself, I begin to realize that I am the person choosing who I want to be and to work on not letting labels of society limit me. I know that I am a guy, when presenting as a guy, there is a knowing feeling that I feel more whole and comfortable with myself. There are some things that society may think are masculine that don’t fit me and I think that’s okay. I just know that I am a guy even though I don’t fit into societal expectations of what a guy should be. I am still building myself up and thinking about the boxes that I tried to fit myself in. Those boxes were not right for me and I became callused and bruised trying to fit myself into something I am not. I want to improve for the better each day, but I realize that I don’t have everything understood yet and that makes me anxious sometimes. But life is a journey and I think that I am on the right path to exploring myself. Blessings to you in all your life’s goals, thank you for being the special soul you are.