My Past, Present, and Future

My Past, Present, and Future

I never thought I would be 42 years old and writing a paper like this one. I had planned

to go to college right after high school, but life does not always happen according to plan. In this

paper, I will present a brief description of a few of my life experiences that have helped shape

the person I am today and analyze some of these experiences using the adult development

theories from this class. I will also look ahead to the goals I want to accomplish in the future.

I grew up in a military family. Both my dad and my mother had enlisted in the U.S. Air

Force after they graduated from high school, and they met when they were stationed at the same

air base. As mom tells it, my dad asked her out on a date several times, but she always refused

because she thought he was a little wild. However, Mom was an early-morning person, and Dad

was a night owl. One evening, my mother was assigned to work the graveyard shift on a security

detail, and she had trouble staying awake. Dad did her a favor by working her shift for her, so

she thought she at least owed him one date. The rest, as they say, is history.

My earliest childhood memories were of growing up on Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi,

Mississippi, as the oldest of five children. As the family grew, my mother left the Air Force, but

my father continued in military service. My siblings and I are all about two years apart in age,

and my childhood was fairly ordinary until I was about ten years old, when my father was

deployed to Japan. My family planned to join him there, but we had to wait for about a year

until Dad could arrange housing for us.

When we finally left for Japan, I was excited at the opportunity to visit a foreign country.

Dad flew home, and the entire family boarded a military ship for a 12-day cruise across the

Pacific Ocean. The military transport vessel was nothing like the luxurious cruise ships of today.

My most vivid memory is of staying in the cabin while my family ate in the dining hall because I

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