Are We Products of Our Environment or Expectations ?

Gabriel Diaz 

After reading Wes Moores book, it made me reflect on how I grew up and I could completely relate to the story. Instead of trying to explain being a product of our enviornment/expectations, Ill give you an insight into my life and hopefully you'll put the pieces together. Growing up in the inner city, I have always heard about being "a product of my environment" and falling into the traps that many kids fall into. Up until now, I have never thought about being a product of my expectations. It makes sense; if the people around you expect you to do something, your more likely to fulfill that expectation. If you expect to be like your older sibling or your parent, you will most likely follow in their footsteps. I have seen countless examples of kids falling victim to their own expectations, and I was almost one of them.

    Growing up, I always seemed to surround myself with the "wrong crowd" but I did not believe in such a thing. I vividly remember kids parents telling them to stay away from me and my friends because we were "bad influences." Ever since I first stepped foot in middle school, I was getting in trouble left and right and my grades were slowly starting to slip. Throughout grammar school, I was a straight A student and getting bad grades was not normal for me. Something changed when I got to middle school and I didn't even realize it. Growing up in the city makes you have to adapt and grow up much quicker than the average kid. By the time I was in seventh grade, I already multiple friends deeply involved in the streets and they were the main bread winners for their family at 12-13 years old! Looking back at it now it was pretty ridiculous; their parents did not care about what they were doing all day, they just needed food on the table. 

    In my environment, instead of kids growing up wanting to be doctors or engineers, kids wanted to be dope boys and tough guys. It wasn't cool to do good in school or listen to your parents( if you were lucky enough to have both parents.) But it was cool to get in fights and skip school. By the time I was in eighth grade I was convinced that I wouldn't make it past high School because most of my friends had dropped out their first year. To them, school wasn't doing much. It wasn't paying bills, wasn't interesting(in their opinion) and the only real reason they went to school in the first place was to hang out with the girls. In their eyes, their life was already mapped out; somehow end up rich through illegal activity, end up in prison, or die in the streets. We didn't have any role models to look up to or anyone who really believed in us. It was like we were trapped in a never ending cycle of stupidity and I realized I wanted better for myself.

    I tried to convince my friends that we were falling into the trap that "they" want us to fall into, and we were following the stereotype of city kids. Most of them didn't listen and continued the same behavior ( as teenagers do) and I slowly started to understand how our lives would differ. My sophomore year 2 of my best friends were sentenced to 15 years for attempted murder and botched robbery that almost turned deadly. This is what completely changed my out look on life. I couldn't let the environment I grew up in dictate my fate. I didn't want to end up like my two friends and I knew I wanted to be successful somehow. Prison was the LAST place I wanted to end up, and I knew if I continued my antics I would be there in no time. 

    Although I believe in being a product of your environment, you can override that by changing your expectations and finding people who believe in you. There are plenty of success stories of kids that come out of horrible environments just because they changed their expectations. Without even realizing it, my expectations changed and I turned out just fine, despite the mindset I carried early on in my teenage years and the environment I grew up in. So to answer the question, I think we are both products of our environments and expectations, and if you come from a negative environment, changing your expectations to positive ones can make a huge difference.