Written by Shannon Healy
In junior year of high school, I took a class called Personal Relations. It was a class about learning about ourselves and deciding what we wanted to do with our lives. The first semester was dedicated to learning ore about our personality was like, and what our values are. We would take personality tests and talk about what we learned. We also defined certain words: values, responsibility, power, etc. Value is something important to you; it’s a strong belief. After we defined that, I learned what my most important value was: independence.
At first, I was surprised. At the time, I didn’t feel like I was very independent. At that time, I was still planning on living with my parents at least until my first two years of college were done. I felt as if I couldn’t support myself by myself. So to find out my most important value was independence was also confusing.
However, during the summer that year, I talked to my best friend a lot about some things, and I realized I needed to start learning more about how to support myself. I had a strong desire from then on to move out after I graduated high school. I would always ask my mom to teach me how to cook, and I would also occasionally learn some things from my best friend. I started trying to step up and be the adult I’m going to be.
Now I’m a senior, and I know for a fact that independence is my most important value. I still work to try to become more independent. I advocate for myself more, I cook, I do the basic things all adults should know. I work hard in school, getting good grades, so I can go to college. And recently, I went and visited my Personal Relations teacher, and I told her how much I loved her class, and how much I connected her class with my life. I told her that because of her class, it helped me realize that my most important value truly IS independence.
