Raven+Y’s+Final+AmEx+2015+Speech

Decisions

 When I was in second grade, my dad, my grandma, and I made the move from Garden City, Michigan to Ventura, California. My dad believed that living in Michigan wouldn’t provide the best future for me considering that nobody on my moms or dads side has even gone to college, and that the atmosphere where we lived was going to be detrimental. When we moved all the way across the country, I left my mom, my four younger siblings, my grandma, my grandpa, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, and all of my friends behind with the promise that I would visit every summer and every winter break for Christmas and my birthday.

 Visiting my family quickly became difficult. Between Junior Lifeguards, wanting to go the fair, wanting to hang out with my friends, and all my other summer activities, it made visiting in the summer almost impossible. When I could squeeze in a week or two to visit, it was never enough time to see my large family. Now the only way I ever make contact with my twelve year old sister is when she occasionally sends me a selfie on snapchat, and my five year old brother can never tear his eyes away from the TV long enough to say ‘hi’ on the phone, and my three year old twin brothers don’t really understand the concept of a phone yet.

 Last summer I was a junior lifeguard assistant which meant that I worked basically every day of the summer, which ultimately didn’t leave any time to fly back to Michigan for a visit. This means that right now I haven’t seen my mom or my siblings in almost two years.

 I know over the years my dad had become hesitant about me going there because he doesn’t want me to get into any bad situations that could ruin any chances I have at a bright future. But I figured that now that I’m almost 18 that my dad would maybe loosen the reigns a little bit and be more lenient about me going. So a few weeks ago I brought it up to my dad that since I didn’t have a lot going on this summer that it would be a good time to start looking at plane tickets. To this, he immediately got angry and said that ‘there is no way in hell’ that I’m going to Michigan. I tried to explain to him that it sucks that having family around. I hate when holidays come because all of my friends spend a day with their family while all I get is fifteen minute phone call from my family. I tried to tell him that I wanted to see my siblings, how I don’t want to be a shadow of a big sister who they don’t know, how I want to have my mom in my life, and how I want to visit my great grandma who is in the hospital dying of cancer. But after my spiel to him, he responded, “You’re only 17, you can’t make a decision about you life that’s that big.”

 So this got me thinking. How come my dad is letting me make the decision on what college I want to go to and what I want to major in? This decision will literally effect my entire life, this will ultimately be probably one of the biggest decisions that I’ll ever make. So why will my dad let me make that decision on my own, but won’t let me make the decision of seeing my distant family because I’m ‘only seventeen’? I think his vision of my future has blinded him a little bit. He’s so desperate to give me the life that he never had that he is so scared that the smallest of things is going to mess it up.

 Now, I understand this because he, as well as I, wants me to be the first person in my family to not be a teen parent, and to graduate from college. But, in my eyes, I don’t think my future is more important than my family. Of course my future is important, but without my family I don’t see myself being happy in my future. So, I tried to explain to my dad, I reminded him that I’m not a bad kid, that I have good friends, I get decent grades, and I don’t do bad things, so he should trust me to be able to handle myself if I were put in an uncomfortable situation. But once again he reiterated that I just wasn’t old enough to make that big of a decision.

 So, to wrap this all up, in the America that I want to live in when I’m older, I don’t want there to be a double-standard for decision making for kids our age. If a decision we want to make isn’t life threatening, then I don’t see why we can’t make that decision for ourselves. After all, for those of us who want to pursue going to college, pretty soon we’re going to make all the decisions on our own. So what better time to practice than now?

Thank you.