Author Archives: Brianna A Robinson

She taught herself

At the age of  17 my mother came to America with both parents and little sister from Cuba. My grandparents wanted a better life for their children and that’s just what they got. They moved to Jersey, got stable jobs and provided for their girls. However, my mother’s sister was young enough to transition easily into the culture of America and was able to pick up the language with little to no struggle. My mother, on the other hand, went from living in Cuba and  Spanish being the only language she knew  to preparing herself for college and having to learn English enough to succeed in school. My mother has always been a driven individual but she struggled to understand the language and it continued on through her college years.

She ended up attending Chestnut Hill College in Pennsylvania and decided to major in biology. Even when she had a hard time with her classes she found her love for science at a young age and worked along side tutors and practiced her English every step of the way. At home, her and her sister were the only two that spoke English.  My grandparents never took the time to try and learn because they were much older. It’s true when they say the younger you are the easier it is to pick up a new language. By day my mother practiced English with her classmates and professors and by whenever she communicated with her parents she spoke her native language. Although she expressed how several of her friends and classmates remained patient with her, her adviser suggested maybe not majoring in biology. She thought it would be way to challenging for my mother to continue to understand the context and language of English while undertaking a major that’s quite difficult. My mom never gave up however. She graduated at the age of 21 with her degree in Biology and even met my father within her last year in school.

Now she is the director of two programs, Child link and Personal Link and has continued to work through any obstacles she comes across. Even though she may still struggle with some spelling and context of words she speaks English just as fluently as she speaks Spanish. It goes to show how the brain works hard and enables us to learn and withhold two languages at a time. Being bilingual is definitely a plus and studies show that those who do speak two languages have better memory of things, are more creative and their minds are more flexible in the thinking process.

 

Work Cited:

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/sep/04/what-happens-to-the-brain-language-learning

 

 

 

Can’t Remember Most of my Childhood

Alex Helligar is an example of a man who has lost memory of most of his memory. It’s common for people to lose memory. As we learned through our lessons, short term memory has a limited capacity, and long term memory comes in different forms. Our experiences are easier to retrieve based on the emotional attachments we have to those moments. Infantile amnesia happens to most people however, even though we probably never thought of it. An example of infantile amnesia is how most of us forget part of our childhood. Personally, I can recall certain experiences that were extremely significant but I have no real memory of ages 3 to maybe 5. According to this article “most of our first four years are a complete blank despite the fact that we retain language and habits acquired in those years.” Based on studies, because of the new cells that start for form, the old memory circuits are pushed out. In result we lose memory of things as time goes on.

Alex, however, is someone who has lost memory as far back as high school. His brain may have developed some trauma or stress and he has experienced amnesia that has made memories fade as he develops more memories. As mentioned before, he can remember specific people and can recall significant memories from high school, possibly because of the emotional impact, but the rest of his high school experiences are quite blurry. It’s often difficult for him to recall the things he ate a week ago as well. It’s difficult to imagine not being able to recall most experiences in your life, especially high school seeing that it’s a time that most of us learn a lot about ourselves.

 

Source:

https://www.quora.com/I-cant-remember-most-of-my-childhood-even-high-school-memories-are-blurry-Why-is-this