Dear Professor Sidibe,

      Within this letter I would like to address the main components that identify who I am currently and will be in your class. My ethnic background is Salvadoran-American, and I am a first generation immigrant. Both of my parents are from El Salvador and they met in the United states after immigrating here for work and family. I have two brothers one older named Edgar and another who is younger named Jeffrey, however, I was raised with my cousins as well so I always say I actually have five brothers. I’m very grateful to be an only girl, not because I’m a spoiled brat, but because growing up with boys taught me how to not be afraid to do what I wanted and to speak for myself. Being born American didn’t stop my parents from having me grow up with Salvadoran culture in my life. They made sure to teach me exactly how to cook all of our traditional plates and how to dance to every form of Latin music at every backyard barbecue. Being able to carry Salvadoran roots as well as my own american ones makes me who I am and identifies me in so many ways.

Growing up, my family have always been extremely Christian, I was forced to go to church until I was 12 and I never liked it because of the institutionalized machismo that surrounded the entire church culture. Machismo is just a term to identify sexist ideals against women held with the Latin community, it took me awhile to understand that standing up to male roles wasn’t a problem and that sometimes my father is wrong and someone better tell him. The church really damaged me in that it required me to act a certain way that was less of following the bible and more of a form of control over women at church. It was only until recently that I had I decided to go back to church on my own because it was something that really was a huge part of my life and even though I had a negative experience I want to form something more spiritually positive.  

As of right now I am a full time student at City College of New York as well as a part time managing sales lead in Gymboree. I’m studying to be a biology major in order to later get my license in pharmaceutical sales and start a career there. At first I was focusing more towards the pre-med field but after getting back into sales I remembered how much I love being able to work in that type of environment. After working as a sales lead, pharmaceutical sales just seems like a better path for me to take. Science has always been something that has interested me in life as it seems to be the only thing that I can understand and want to know more about despite the difficulty. Being the only college student in my family is something that I am immensely proud of and it makes me want to give my best in college all the time. I do my best in everything I do so that even when I fail I know that I did everything I could to the best of my abilities and that’s all anyone could ask for.

My goals for your class is to better myself as a writer, I don’t believe my grammar is good at all but it has definitely improved over the years. I expect to have a good relationship with you and to receive good feedback on my writing in order to have a better understanding on my mistakes. I would much rather have a lot of writing on my paper that’s telling what’s wrong with what I did than just have someone say it’s good. Being deemed as a good writer would just keep me in one stage and I would have no reason to improve on anything else, which I don’t exactly find helpful. Nonetheless, I am certain that this will not be the case in your class, and I’m definitely looking forward to it.

Thank You,

         Jessica Umanzor