What is my Purpose?

       Not gonna lie, when asked what my purpose is mostly blankness comes to mind.  It's a pretty loaded question for me.  My purpose could be what I want to do as a career, what I want to get out of life, what I want life to get out of me, or maybe how I want to be remembered.  First I suppose is my career.  I've know my general area of work I want to enter since about fifth grade.  In about seventh grade I can up with what I know I want to do specifically, and it hasn't changed since. 
       When playing cops and robbers as a child I've always wanted to "catch the bad guy".  At my youngest I thought the only oppurtunity to do that was to be a cop, so that's what I was determinded to do.  A few years later I started to realize that there are many ways to "catch the bad guy".  After my interest for the human mind had bloomed I knew exactly how I could do this.  I would go into forensic psychology.  Now in high school I get a lot of crap for carrying around serial killer books all the time.  My little sister espically think I'm going to grow up to take lives myself, when all I really wanna do is put those who do behind bars.  I could never hurt a fly, I even feel bad when I say something mean to an animal(though I know they can't understand me).
       Another goal in life for me is to help people.  The more people you help the better. In highschool I can do very little so as of right now I'm stuck giving blood and being nice to underclassman(not that that isn't important but not the life changing help I'm talking about).  Being very protective by nature I hear a lot from close friends and family that they think I would be a good mother.  I, however, do not want to have my own biological children.  To me helping already born children that don't have a good home seems more important.  Being a foster parent has been a want of mine for a long time, in the end I may adopt a few but I just want to give them all a good, stable home. I belive that almost all problem children can be fixed by simply adjusting their home life and making it more stable and consistant.  This may also be a way to provent future crimes. 
       Life should be generally joyful.  You should enjoy your career so that you go into everyday looking forward to work.  Making work a little less work.  You should enjoy almost everything about what you do.  Why do something if you don't like doing it?  I realize this doesn't work with everything like taxes and inlaws but if there weren't a few bad times, the good times wouldn't seem quite as good.  The most generalize goal I have is to live a happy and fulfilling life.  Ending each day feeling like I accomplished something and I enjoyed doing it.  Like when you get done cleaning your room or painting a fence, not really enjoyed doing it but there is a sense of accomplishment. 
       What do I want to be remembered for after I die?  To most this may seem like an odd and slightly depressing question to ask yourself, espically in high school.  Despite the fact that many people avoid thinking or talking about death I think that may be some people's downfall.  Thinking about death could be a good way to keeping you on the right track to being a generally good person.  If you never think that death is a possibilty for you and that it could never happen tomorrow, guess what?  You're wrong.  The day before accidental deaths, people don't think, "Hey I'm probably going to die tomorrow, I should probably start being a good person now."  They are either remembered for being a good person or a bad person based on how they acted daily.  If you live each day like it's your last it might not just help you live more joyfully and carefree but maybe the people around you also.  I know if it were my last day I wouldn't wanna spend time gossiping about other people or being rude.  I'd think more along the lines of let's just end this on a good note.  Thinking back on the lives of family members who have died I think of how they wanna be remembered.  Would they wanna be remembered how I remember them?  For example my lovely granmother, Donna, who I remember as being caring, sweet, hard working yet couldn't control her addiction to pills which ultimately lead to her death.  Or my other grandmother, Beverly, who though she was an amazing cook and cared for her family more than anything always seemed a little strange.  I've decided how I want to be remembered.  When people think back on the life of me I want them to think I always tried to be a good person.  I want people to think that I always tried to add joy and happiness to other peoples lives.  I want to be missed.  How do you want to be remembered?

 The college I plan to attend

 My career choice

My purpose

Where Am I?

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."-Robert Frost
       As a child I lived in few places.  Those in Nebraska were Norfolk, Albion, and now Aurora.  I also spent four years in the city of Menesha, Wisconsin.  There are good and bad things about all of these places.  I'll start with my place of birth in Albion.  I love this town.  It was my first home and I feel like I know almost everything about what Albion was.  Besides my grandmother's old house, my favorite place in town was Charlie's.  On top of this white shack the sign said The Albion Dariette, but everyone knew the real name.  A rather big fellow by the name of Charlie would sit in the corner in a dirty white shirt and jeans and watch the teenagers serve up the ice cream.  Never in my life have I ever tried better ice cream than that served at Charlie's, and trust me I've eaten plenty to compare.  Albion also houses many unpleasant memories.  Whenever I go there I can feel a dark cloud go over me, bringing my mood down drastically.  For example the memory of spending two weeks in the summer with my grandmother who was on her death bed.  The whole funeral process we went through there with two of my grandparents.  Also most of the memories associated with my biological father are split between Albion and Norfolk.  A few years ago I met a current friend of mine that just happened to live in Albion.  We were able to create some more good memories to cover the bad.
         After living in both Norfolk and Albion our family picked up and moved to Menesha.  I hate cities.  My current hate for cities probably stems from my brief childhood expierence with this one.  At the time it didn't seem to bad.  Our neighborhood was full of children our age that we could play with but I was still being passed back and forth from Norfolk to Menesha.  After spending four years there so my dad could finish his schooling, we moved back to Nebraska to be close to family. 
       I've spent most of my 18 years in the small town of Aurora, Nebraska.  There are many things about Aurora that I love.  Everyone knows everyone.  I suppose this could be both good and bad because this also means that rumors spread rather quickly... It takes about a day for the whole town to find something out.  I love the sense of community here.  To me it seems like if anyone was having any kind of trouble, neighbors and friends would do anything they could to help.  People say "hi" here. When cars pass eachother there is an exchange of a friendly wave, or in some people's case a lift of the pointer finger.  When going to the store you can start up a conversation with the cashier because chances are you either know them or see them on a regular basis.  Another thing I love about my home town is the history and how people know it.  We are taught throughtout elementary, middle, and highschool about our towns history.  There are stories passed down about the old buildings that surround our courthouse, like the old bowling ally on the top floor of one of the buildings or Bufflao Bill's signature in the old Aurora Motel books.  The courthouse itsself also has a history people know, like the strobe light at the top being orignally put in my Edgerton or it being burnt down and rebuilt.  Even the streets hold history, though some people in town find them no more than an annoyance.  I find the rugged brick streets add character to our small town. 
       A big part of my life in Aurora is my highschool.  Besides the seven hours and ten minutes of actual school I also spend two hours after that at practice.  I better grow to love the school because I spend so much time at it.  Last year I would get to school at 7:30 to pitch, shower at school, go to school,followed by practice.  That's ten hours a day at school.  Walking into the gym there is an immidiate scent.  To me it's firmiliar and comfortable because of long work outs and many days spent there.  Each class room holds memories of their own for me and for other people and even for years after me and my classmates graduates the school will be a place that makes memories for people.

       I think the question of who I am is becoming more difficult as I think about it rather than easier.  When I think of who I am, instinctively, I think of who I want to be, not who I am.  In thinking for so long about this question I've come to a conclusion: who I am consists of three things.  The first thing I will talk about is my past.
       I was born in Albion, Nebraska on September 26, 1993 to Scott and Deana Ransen.  I dread discussing most of my pre-school years because of the confusion which surrounded them.  To put it simply I was passed back and forth from Norfolk, Nebraska to Menesha, Wisconsin to Albion, Nebraska till I was old enough to go to school.  Divorse has a tendency to do things like that.  After some years of constant moving and a change of last name, me and my newly mended family found the lovely town of Aurora.  From there on I had the normal childhood of playing on the monkey bars and switching friends every other day.  Until middle school where I hit my mildly depressed phase.  Anyone in my class that was around back then would agree that black was the only color in my daily wardrobe, and there were a few questionable rumors going around about my hobbies.  Once I reached highschool I decided to "clean my water".  I started distancing myself from the friends I knew weren't headed in the right direction.  It was difficult for me at the time but I know that I wouldn't be the same person that I am now if I stayed in the envirnment.  Since then my life has been very similar to how it is now.
       The second thing I think that makes me who I am is where I want to go.  I have many goals for my future and I do what I need to accomplish those goals.  This is why I think it is so important in explaining who I am.  My more generalized goals are things like so many of my classmates want: go to college, start a family, and have a successful career.  I intend to go to a smaller private college where I can get a degree in either sociology or biopsychology.  By the end of my life I hope to obtain my doctorates in whichever field of study I decide to pursue.  Next I want to start a family.  I know that no one has much control over this aspect but I know the few things I have control over I want to maintain control over.  Such as the age that I decide to start a family at.  I figure why not break the family tradition and actually wait till I'm an adult to have children.  Crazy expectation, I know.  Realizing that keeping balance between things is hard, I still hope to be able to keep a successful career and a family.  Hopefully eventually I can get reasonable hours so that I can raise my children the way I want them to be raised.  Some other random goals I have are learning sign language, go skydiving, travel the world, parasailing, and meeting an amazingly famous person.
       The third is the few facts a know about myself.  I'm aware of how strange that sounds but to me who I am is mostly what others see in me not what I see in myself.  I know that I love almost all Mexican food.  I think they know what they are doing and that us Americans should take some good notes to try to do the same.  I also know that I love mystery and all things that are unknown to me.  I'm fascinated by the "why's" of the world, the things that no one really has proof of.  Death is a very interesting topic to me because of it's mystery.  Also I would probably be the first to die in a horror movie because I would have to investigate the mysterious sound that I heard coming from the dark.  I'm not afraid of very many things.  Off the top of my head all I can think of in heights, but I still love all the giant rides at the fair, and looking down on the tiny people below me.  I have a pretty high pain tolerance, love scary movies, and I'm huge.  I think that's pretty much everything but I'll end with a quote because "I'm huge" doesn't sound very good. "You can close your eyes to things you do not want to see but you cannot close your heart to things you do not want to feel."-unknown

 My family doesn't have very many traditions.  One of the few we have is going to cemetaries on Memorial Day.  First we go to St. Ed, Nebraska and watch their service.  We also go their to visit my grandparents' grave.  Then we go to every small cemetary in the area finding all relatives, usually starting with the ones we were closer to and move on to the one's that were only alive in the stories our grandparents told.

Me, far right, and my three sister at my grandparents grave in St. Ed,Ne.

BEST SONG EVER!