Sample Autobiography

This piece was written by Jon Iuzzini for a graduate course at Texas A&M University. Please do
not cite or reproduce this work without written permission from the author. Students at
Maryville College should note that the Autobiography assignment for their classes should be
shorter than this piece; at most, the Autobiography they submit to Jon Iuzzini should be two
typed pages, double spaced.

When I sit back and consider the significant events in my past, the important aspects
of my current life, and my future goals, the underlying theme is one of appreciating
diversity, especially across ethnic and socioeconomic class lines.

I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, the product of a Catholic father with
roots in Italy and a Jewish mother of Russian and Austrian ancestry. In my early years
of education, the frustration with teachers mispronouncing my last name seemed as
though it might never end. I remember how my father would approach the
administrators of my elementary school before Honor Roll ceremonies to be sure they
would pronounce it correctly as I walked across the stage for my moment of glory.
The terror did not end until the seventh grade when I had my first course in Spanish,
at which point my teacher had some experience with "exotic" names and got "you-
zee-nee" correct on the first try. I began to question whether it was acceptable to have
a unique heritage which did not coincide with the majority in my neighborhood.
During my middle-school years, I sat back and listened to one anti-Semitic comment
after another, half-enjoying the fact that my last name afforded me an escape from any
direct harassment. The irony of this time was that I was also enrolled in Hebrew
lessons in the evenings to prepare for a Bar Mitzvah. It was during these dreaded
twice weekly sessions that I escaped the anti-Semitic banter of my schoolmates only
to suffer regular onslaughts from my Jewish instructor, whose single goal in life
seemed to be ridding the world of intermarriages, specifically those between lecherous
Catholic men who sought to take advantage of inculpable, innocent Jewish women.
Needless to say, she was not invited to the Bar Mitzvah, probably the first ever at the
East Midwood Jewish Center to be attended by as many Catholic Italians from Staten
Island as Jews from Brooklyn and Westchester. Sadly, my personal experience over
the past several years is that I have generally not been accepted by the families of
Jewish girls I have dated, because they perceived my own ancestral lineage as
somehow tainted. But all of these have been important lessons, and I believe that I
have learned as much through these experiences as I have through my nineteen years
(and counting) of public education.

I believe that I grew more, emotionally, socially, and intellectually, during my four
years of high school than during any other period of time thus far. Midwood High
School at Brooklyn College attracted students from every part of New York City, and
in a sense was a way for me to escape what my middle-school guidance counselor
perceived as an academic dead-end for me in my neighborhood. Indeed, it provided a
rigorous academic environment, and with one college advisor for each graduating
class of nearly 700 students, I managed to learn some important lessons about dealing
with "the system." Midwood continues to prepare its students well; it has consistently
placed among the top 50 in national rankings of high schools, and in 1998 there were
more semi-finalists in the prestigious Westinghouse Science competition (now
sponsored by Intel) from Midwood than from any other high school. The current
status of the school I graduated from in 1992 may not seem terribly relevant here, but
it is in fact central to the theme of this autobiographical statement. It was at Midwood
that I found my academic strengths and was given the tools to pursue them to the
fullest extent possible. Because I was placed in a situation with few of the resources
many students had in other better-funded schools, I learned how to make the best of
the situation. It was also at Midwood that I first experienced what it meant to be an
ethnic minority. Until then I was able to hide behind my last name, but at Midwood I
was truly in the minority: there was a significant population of African American,
Latino, and Asian American students. In total, Caucasian students amounted to
approximately one-third of the school's student body. While many people remember
their first interracial experiences as very negative, my experiences at Midwood were
overwhelmingly positive. I also became involved with Amnesty International, which
works to free political prisoners in countries across the globe. My mind was suddenly
opened to the experiences of people I never would have thought existed. During my
junior year I began volunteering at Gay Men's Health Crisis, an organization which
raises money to help people with AIDS. I worked in a variety of capacities, and by the
time I left for SUNY Albany in the summer of 1992, I believed that I was ready to
take on the world.

What I found at SUNY was a somewhat oppressive educational environment which

mostly everyone characterized as "get what you can, while you can." This was a
school constantly suffering from budget cuts and intra-office squabbles at every level
of the university, from the President's office, through the academic departments, to the
Student Government. The rich diversity I remembered from Midwood was shattered
by ongoing racial tensions. Most of the 16,000 students had come from segregated
neighborhoods and had only known people of the same ethnic and socioeconomic
backgrounds. In most ways, this was the antithesis of the school I loved so much in
Brooklyn. Searching for the calm in this storm of uncertainty, I began work with the
Department of Residential Life at the end of my first year. This would be a way to
help pay for my education, and I took on a newly created job as a Multicultural
Student Assistant. Instead of the typical dorm employee responsibilities of looking
after fifty or so drunken freshmen, I was charged with enhancing the state of race
relations in the residence halls. I was given a budget and told to create programs
which would bring students together, through dialogue or some other social venue;
this was my choice, I was told. As the year progressed, I watched helplessly as the
administrators postponed and then cancelled one program after another. Student
officers and popular faculty who had previously agreed to be resources for this new
initiative would later try every means possible of avoiding any connection with the
program. Evidently, the administration feared that we would be creating an image of
having a "race problem" if we addressed such issues in public forums. After the year
was over, I continued to work within Residential Life, partly out of financial
necessity. But I also knew that this was likely to be the only way that I could continue
to work and interact with students from other backgrounds.

I began to search for a way to address my own concerns about the racial tensions that
I felt brewing around me. Monica Rodriguez, the professor for my Personality
Psychology course, was conducting research with children at risk for negative life
outcomes. She was exploring this area through the lens of ethnic identification
processes, a topic of research which was directly related to the issues I was
confronting in my personal affairs. After the semester was over, I began working in
her lab and continued for the next two years until I graduated. During this time, I also
worked with Professor James Jaccard on research dealing with risk behaviors,
including drunk driving and inconsistent use of contraceptives in adolescent
populations. In this way, I was integrating my field of choice with the pieces of all
that I had become interested in during my high school years. In a sense, I suppose I
was following the popular SUNY philosophy of taking what little I could get out of a
public education. When I realized that I was losing faith in the public education
system, I stopped myself and took stock of the situation. Indeed, the scene was grim
looking in from the outside. I thought about my mother, who had worked for more
than 25 years in the New York City public school system, in some of the least
adequately-funded schools in the city. She had dedicated her life to giving to
communities which could gain so much from her altruistic professional style. I
decided then that there were two kinds of people: those who had experienced life as it
was handed to them, with one luxury after another, and those who worked for much of
what they achieved, and thus placed a higher value on each of their accomplishments.
I knew that my parents, and myself to a lesser extent, were a part of the second group.
Considering my time at SUNY from this perspective, I knew that this was another
experience that prepared me well for the years that would follow. Within a few years I
would find myself at Texas A&M University, bringing another drastic change in my
lifestyle and the culture I would have to adapt to. The past few years have been a very
enjoyable experience, satisfying all of my intellectual and social needs. I have focused
the next few years on developing a solid research program dealing with social
psychological approaches to social issues, especially racial and ethnic relations. I have
also put forth as much effort as possible in attempting to diversify the future of our
profession. Since my arrival at Texas A&M, I have recruited and advised over sixty
undergraduate researchers, one third of whom have been students of color. I believe
that having a diverse group of students on my research team enables me to conduct
stronger, better informed research. Additionally, I am helping to enable these students
to have experiences similar to the ones I fondly remember, when I learned as much
from the different people I interacted with as I did in my formal classes. Finally, I
have devoted some of my time to working with the Society for the Psychological
Study of Social Issues (APA Division 9), as the Chair of the Student Committee
(1998-1999), and as an Editorial Board member of the Society's Journal of Social
Issues.

A few years ago, I graduated from the University at Albany with a major in
Psychology and a minor in Sociology. As something of a consolation prize for all the
crises I faced over those years, I was asked to serve as a flagbearer at the
commencement ceremony. I felt a great deal of pride in this distinction; though it was
a minor achievement, it did allow me to stand out somewhat among a class of 3000. I
suppose that the icing on the cake is that the arena announcer managed to pronounce
my last name correctly as I brought the flag up to the stage. To the best of my
knowledge, my father did not speak to him beforehand.