4-21-97 20 years old. My time at Indiana University of Pennsylvania is slowly coming to an end. Classes are over and finals take priority. The decision to continue my education at Indiana University of Pennsylvania is over. Instead, I will move back home and attend Kutztown University. The decision to leave Indiana is based solely on the fact that I never felt connected to this university in the sense of belonging. There were challenges here and while I don’t mind a challenge, I just feel attending school closer to home is where I need to be. Despite leaving Indiana University after only one semester, my time up here was a self discovering one. I learned that having a disease like Muscular Dystrophy attracts a lot of attention. The attention Muscular Dystrophy brought was at times very uncomfortable. The uncomfortable feeling is similar to being the last kid picked for a sporting event. Everybody knows that you were the last kid selected, your skills at the event are probably poor and nobody really likes you enough to select you ahead of the other people participating in the event. As a result, you feel inferior to others. You begin beating yourself up through mental games. You tell yourself to run harder, lift more weight in the gym, hate Muscular
Dystrophy for leaving you with a body that is dying. By playing this mental game with yourself, you think you can improve your self worth. The strange phenomenon about this uncomfortable feeling is that it came from within ME. I don’t know what other people thought about me as a person or what they thought about my physical movements. The only thing I knew was MY thoughts about MY self in the situation and then I projected my thoughts as thoughts others were thinking about. In a way, I was and am a prisoner to my self. Only I can change that uncomfortable feeling I experience, by changing my thoughts when I am in
uncomfortable situations. Indiana University of Pennsylvania showed me this side of my self and now it is up to me to decide how I want to live my life. Thank You IUP.
