Kiev :)

Kiev :)

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Social Imagination

 When we went over social imagination in class, I was a little taken aback. We've always been told we are shaped by our environment but the Outliers story really opened my eyes. It's hard to look at a story like that and realize that everything would be very different if this little town hadn't been formed. These people would have been just like the rest of America and would never have shown the world how much we affect each other. At first this shocked me because the concept of social imagination is kind of scary; we would be completely different people if we lived somewhere else. I started thinking about this and it reminded me a little of my grandmother. She was raised in Soviet Ukraine, and her surroundings greatly affected her. She doesn’t believe in religion because she was never allowed to, everything is supposed to be extremely clean because they had so few nice things back then that they wanted to show that they can keep what they do have in order, and she still sometimes worries about little things, such as someone dropping an apple, because back then they had so little. This is how she was affected by her society and the social imagination is very different from mine because of where I grew up and my influences. Such as my school and my friends in America.

Monday, August 23, 2010

About Me

Hey! I'm Victoria and i'm a 16 year old junior. I was born in Kiev, Ukraine and moved to America when i was 3 years old. Because of this I am bilingual; i speak Russian and English. I am a Krav Maga fighter; krav maga is the self defense they teach the Israeli army. I've been doing it for a few years now and i really like it. I'm testing to move up a level as soon as i can. It means a lot to me because i can see myself becoming capable of defending myself in any situation. Walking down a dark alley in Chicago at 2 am doesn't scare me. I'm in Krav because of my dad, in Ukraine all your problems were solved with your fists, so he wants me to be able to defend myself. He is the biggest influence in my life, he sacrificed so much so my mom, my brother, and I could have all opportunities possible. My family is really important to me because we are really close, we have a lot of family parties and they ply a big role in my life. As a person i would say im outgoing but i love to have fun, which is probably why i get my friends in some weird situations. I plan to go to the University of Wisconsin and study business. That's basically it about me!