Getting to Know Me

     My name is Jada Bey. I am 22 years old, soon to be 23 in October. This is 4th year at NJCU. I am a psychology major. Since my junior year in high school (Technology High School located in Newark, Nj) I've known that I wanted my main focus to be psychology. I have always been interested in studying people and understanding how the mind works. To be completely honest I took this class because it fit well into my schedule. However, anything involving pop culture always grabs my attention. 

    

    Becoming literate never came as a challenge to me due to the fact that I was always surrounded by people who had a role childhood education. My mom being a special needs teacher's aid for as long as I can remember and my god-mother whom I was very close with being an early childhood teacher gave me the leverage I needed to be well educated in an environment outside of school. After all, learning does start at the home. 

    Tracing back to my earliest years of school, I remember always being one of those students who stood out in a class of 20+ students. Math and literacy just always happened to come easy to me. However, school was never really a main interest of mine. I was much more into dance but of course I would not be allowed to join any dance teams unless I promised to put my education first so without a doubt I took that deal. 

    Even though school was not always at the top of my list of favorite things to do I have always loved book fair season. Just seeing the big shelves and tables filled with books did something to my spirit. I was ecstatic to see all of the options of books I could choose from and seeing the choices my friends made. I wouldn't be me if I didn't leave with the newest Junie B. Jones books. Those were my absolute favorite. 

                             

    Moving on to my middle school years, I began to let go of need to dance. I found myself just solely focusing on school and keeping up with whatever was going on in the lives of my closest friends, you know, typical preteen girl things. I even participated in a school wide spelling bee. Now it wasn't really major but it was a big moment for me because my grade had plenty of super intelligent students. First we had a mini spelling bee competition in our homeroom to see who could compete for the school wide bee. Me and about three other students were chose to represent our class. A couple weeks later when it came time for the big competition I made it round after round but unfortunately I did not win. I was sad but I didn't really let it get to me. I just used it as another learning experience. 

    Nowadays I am more in tune with literacy being that I am a college student who is trying to be someone in life. Literacy or education in general is just something that no one can take away from you. It opens up so many more doors for you oppose to someone who doesn't have much experience with literacy.