Human beings are very complex. Our minds work in so many different ways, and every moment we live through impacts us in so many ways, both when the moment happens, and long after it’s done. We are shaped and changed by so many things, that it can be difficult to tell what really makes a person who they are in the present. My name is Amanda Fitzpatrick. I am a freshman studying physics and astrophysics at The Ohio State University. I’m a singer, a reader, a scientist, a Christian, and so many other things all rolled into one. That is who I am now. How I became that person is a long story, and to tell all of it would take a lifetime, because the story never really ends. But I suppose I have to start somewhere. Perhaps it would be best to start at the beginning. We all have a story. This is mine.
When I was a little girl, I was a little girl like any other. I was bright, happy, and a bit shy, but with a loving family, a good house, a playmate across the street, and a couple of pets. Normal, simple, happy life. I suppose the first change was when my parents split up, and later got divorced. My mom and I moved from Dayton to little Troy, Ohio, right down the street from my great-grandparents. I started the first grade at age seven not long after. I remember going down to my great-grandparents’ house every day after school, eating cookies and baking with grandma. I remember a few school friends, not many, but a few. I remember one of my mom’s boyfriends yelling at her, and I remember physically pushing him out the door. I remember his deaf son, who was kind despite his father. Aside from that, my time in Troy was unremarkable. Until near the end of it. My mom’s last boyfriend moved in with us. He’s my stepdad now. I remember him making her happier than I’d ever seen her, and I remember loving him for it. That last year in Troy was the best, until the end. In September of 2006, right after my tenth birthday, my great-grandpa had a stroke. He was dead a month later. His death, while sad, is what first brought me closer to God. He made me a Christian, rather than just a kid who went to church every Sunday because they have to. Not long after his death, we moved to Hilliard, Ohio, away from everything I had ever known. At first, of course, I was devastated. I had friends in Troy. I didn’t want to leave. The move turned out to be the biggest tipping point of my life, because it brought so many other things, good and bad, with it.
Right after the move, I was very shy, and I had a lot of trouble making new friends. Luckily for me, there was someone else in my class going through the same thing. Natalia Sorenson. We had similar interests, we both loved to read, and we were both alone. She was a God-send. Now that I think back on it, I wonder if she really was, figuratively and literally. I don’t know what I would have done without her in the years to follow. Now, after that year, she was homeschooled until we reached high school, so I was alone again during school, but she lived so close that it didn’t really matter. By the sixth grade, I had finally managed to make some more friends, and I got started on the accelerated math track with pre-algebra. Sixth grade wasn’t too bad. Middle school, on the other hand, was torture. My classes were fine, for the most part, and I got started on the accelerated science track seventh grade. My fellow students, on the other hand, were pure evil. Or at least that was how it felt at the time. Not only that, but I still had very few friends, so I didn’t really have anyone to defend me, either. Luckily, middle school ended, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Now, before I move on to high school, I should mention one very important detail about the sixth grade. You see, that was the year that I started singing in the Columbus Children’s Choir, which, to be perfectly honest, is probably the only reason I managed to get through middle school with my sanity intact. The choir was, and is, one of the most important aspects of my life, and deserves far more credit than I have time to give it.
Before I started high school, I expected it to be fantastic. I certainly expected it to be a little bit more pleasant than middle school. In some ways, it was. I had more opportunities, I was with my intellectual peers more, and I had a lot more fun outside of school with the choir, like in the Spain trip in 2014. Otherwise, high school was as bad as middle school. I had more friends than before, and those friends introduced me to many of my favorite shows and books and movies, but I also had more problems. There was so much more pressure to do everything right. So much so, that when I didn’t, I felt like I had failed. That, along with issues with a couple of friends in my senior year, led to a very low self-esteem. I still had confidence in myself, mostly from choir, but I often felt like I was stupid, or not good enough, like when everyone else in the class understood something and I didn’t. I wasn’t depressed, but I definitely wasn’t happy. Those issues are still present today. Those issues, and my limited social life in high school have led me to try to put myself out there more, to be more open and sociable. I think it’s helped, at least a little, though I doubt my problems are going to go away as quickly as I’d like them to.
Those issues, and trying to be more social, are at least part of why I wanted to join STEM. I knew that it would be an opportunity to make more friends, people with similar interests, who care about learning as much as I do (I may not have liked high school, but I still loved learning). I wanted opportunities to learn more about the world outside the classroom, to make new discoveries, to research, to explore the world from the perspective of a scientist. I’ve been excited by science for years. I’ve been curious and questioning since I was a child. I want to learn about our world, and other worlds, and I believed- I still believe- that STEM is the best way to do that. I’m still a Christian, a singer, a reader, and all of that, but I want to be a scientist. I want to love learning again, and be able to love it without feeling like I’m getting it all wrong. I’m most excited about Ohio State because it feels like a place where I can put all of the bad behind me and not just continue my story, but start a new one.
My Strengths
In taking the StrengthsFinder test, I found some things that I expected, and already knew were a part of me. I also found other things I did not expect, and there were some things missing which I had thought were integral parts of who I am. However, I have found that my strengths, despite my many neutral responses, seem to fit me much better than I had hoped. In order, from first to last, my top five strengths turned out to be input, intellection, connectedness, learner, and belief. Three of my strengths suit me very well (the ones related to matters of the mind), though the other two do not fit quite as well.
Input, intellection, and learner all fit into the StrengthsFinder category of strategic thinking. All three of these strengths are very similar, in that they all describe a love of knowledge and learning, and a tendency to get lost in a good book. They all describe me very well, both in my personal life and in school, as I have always loved learning itself, even if I haven’t always loved homework or the school experience. Connectedness fits into the relationship building category. I have never been the best with relationships, I thought. I was (and I still am, at least partially) an introvert. I’ve never been one to put myself out there and make conversation just for conversation’s sake. However, despite that, the connectedness strength fits me far better than I would have expected. For example, as the personalized strength insight says, I enjoy the company of people who have survived great challenges in life, and I benefit from the wisdom they gained from those experiences. I also feel refreshed after conversation with future-oriented thinkers (though, in fact, I think I may be one of them myself). Belief, my final strength, is in the executing category. My main connection with that strength, I think, is in how I view the world, and in my hope for humanity’s future.
I am not completely sure how all of my strengths fit into my everyday life right now. I know at least the three in the strategic thinking category play a huge role in academics. The other two play a role in what I think from a philosophical standpoint, and in the way I treat others. From an academic standpoint, my strengths, especially input, intellection, and learner, all help me to excel, as I enjoy learning in and of itself, and I can more easily take in and comprehend new information.
Now that I know my strengths, I am hopeful that I can take better advantage of them in my future career, though they do not change my plans for the future. In fact, they give me hope that those plans will come to fruition more easily than I had dared to hope before. I hope, through better use of my strengths, particularly the strategic thinking strengths, I can achieve more in my future career in physics. Those strengths in particular drive me to learn more about the world, and curiosity is what makes a scientist. Without curiosity, science wouldn’t happen at all, or, at least, we wouldn’t know about it. Connectedness can help me to connect more to the people that I will work with, to build relationships with the people I will go to for advice and counsel, on matters both professional and personal. Belief will help me give purpose to my work, outside of quenching my curiosity, which might be the most important point of all.