Share the Dream: My Life, My Focus, My Goal Share the Dream: My Life, My Focus, My Goal: Kineavy, Aiden

Share the Dream essay by Aiden Kineavy

Hello, my name is Aiden Kineavy, I am 19 and an only child from South Boston, MA I lived with my dad, but have recently moved to Braintree with my aunt and my 3 cousins, Juliana, David, and JJ. I went to Bc High for a couple of years in high school, then I transferred over to Braintree High for some. I liked both I'd say equally, with some better aspects than others for each. I grew up with a very unusual childhood, even though I am where I am today, not a lot of people would hear my story and believe I am. My parents had me at 16, which was very hard for both of them. Having a kid that young is insane to me; they were younger than I am right now, with me running around. There were some adult things that interfered with my mom's and dad's relationship, which made him leave me and her to live on our own. My mom had a hard time with drugs, and my dad did too, but got better; she just couldn't. Always fighting with my grandma about it because I was in her life now, and she needed to lock in and provide for me. She couldn't stop and ended up getting into a really bad car accident, which led the courts to take me away from her and give me to my grandma. She died only a couple of months after I moved in with her. She slipped and hit her head in the bathroom. After her death, there was really nowhere for me to go, so I almost went into foster homes until my mom fought the courts to get me back, living with her. She won got me back, and then only a few years later, at the age of 6, she got very sick with cancer and died faster than I could blink. It spread so fast, and she was gone before I really understood what was happening. After she passed, I moved back in with my dad and lived a pretty normal life. I played sports, went to summer camp, went out with friends, you know, just normal kid things. He made sure I had someone to talk to about what happened, so I would get pulled out of class randomly when I was in middle school to talk to about my mom and my feelings. But I always had a problem with my behavior, which prevented me from being able to do a lot, since I would always be grounded or have something taken away, and I would always be so mad at myself for doing the behavior so I would try to think of reasons why I did it and when I would be asked I would never know I always thought I was just a bad kid. Finally, after getting in trouble so much, I was suggested a therapist. I saw many but none really helped until I met Noel. I was about 13, and she finally made me realize it's not my fault for a lot of the things I do. She knew I had to work on a lot of things but she saw good in me and honestly motivated me so much to do my school work and be better. I would still get in trouble here and there, but then I got suspended, and it went downhill from there. I came back to school upset and did not want to do anything or even sometimes do more stuff that would cause me to get into trouble. 

Freshman year I got suspended 2 times, so I was in a deep puddle with my dad and then my dad's mom died that summer and I fell into a depressed, angry, and rebellious stage. I was very close to her, and it just hit me. I was kicked out of summer camp, kicked out of my aunt's house in San Diego because she was done with my shenanigans, and the only reason I was out there was that my dad couldn't deal with me anymore so that only made things a lot worse when I got back. I was pretty much locked in my room for the rest of that summer with nothing to do every day besides stare at a wall. I would try to sneak my phone or use my school's iPad to watch TV or communicate with my friends but I was still just so depressed and wanted to die every day to just escape that prison. My dad caught me while using my phone a couple of times and finally just said I want you outside unless you're eating, sleeping, or doing hw and would catch me coming on school nights all messed up because it helped me escape that world I hated every day. He then kicked me out after a couple of months of that and I had nowhere to go, so I asked my aunt If i could move in. She let me right away and made me feel like one of her kids. I felt the happiest I had been in months and started to take school more seriously and just mentally focus myself so much better.  I then went to Braintree High for 2 years and started to smoke since I thought school was so easy and fell behind a lot. I failed out first term of junior year and wasn't able to try out for basketball and I almost wasn't even able to graduate senior year unless I locked in the last month of school. I made it through and got to college, where again I started off rough, but I started to get the hang of it, and now I'm here. 

In the beginning, I enrolled at UMass Dartmouth because my dream school is UMass Amherst, and I did not get accepted, so I applied here so I could hopefully transfer next year, but throughout my time here, I think I like it, and I'm going to stay. I feel like  I wouldn't be able to do any of my work or Focus since there's so much going on all the time, and if I had missed out, I would have fomo, and instead of doing my work, I would stress and procrastinate all of it. So I'm happy with my decision to enroll here and want to make an impact at this school.

My experience in the college now program has been pretty good. It started off pretty bad with me missing all the meetings, skipping class, not doing work, and honestly just not giving School my best effort. I got pulled into a meeting with Dr. Cosgrove, where she talked to me about how important it is to attend those meetings, not skip class, and do my work. She made it very clear that I would not be returning if I didn't start to lock in. After that, I started going to all the meetings and classes that I had, which brought me closer to my group mentor and Danisha, and I feel like I got close and started to feel a lot more confident about asking questions and doing my work as well as motivated. I think being able to have meetings was probably the most helpful to me since every week I would have to check in and make sure I'm on top of my work. I am motivated to stay in school so I can get a better job when I'm older and to increase how smart I am. I think college is different than High School because it's your own life now, you have no one waking you up, no one driving you to school, no one, unless you ask, is going to help you with your work or even motivate you to do it, and teachers don't really care if you do the work or not. They'll go up there and do a whole presentation, and it's your job to take the notes where whereas in high school, you are forced to and yelled at usually if you didn't have a notebook in a pencil out. As well as the classes, the times are different. The school day can be over in High School, and I'm just getting to my first class, that's pretty hard to adjust to. I am a business major right now but am looking to switch to psychology so I can get my master's degree so I can be a Therapist when I'm older. 

Hopefully, if I'm a therapist, I will use that to give back to the people who need help and need that other voice to either stand up for them or make tough decisions. Obviously, the only reason I will know this is if I go to school to be a therapist and I'm planning to do so here.  I think I'd be a pretty good therapist considering all the stuff that's happened in my life and all the therapy I've gone through. I have been my group's therapist or in other words, the person my friends go to about hard things when they don't know who else to talk to, since I know what to say, usually, and can provide them comfort. One thing I'd like to change in the world is stereotypes. I believe that stereotypes can have an effect and how people do things, like getting help. If a guy is seen crying, he's usually seen as weak, but there are a lot of things people go through every day that they keep inside because they're too scared to express their feelings and be seen as “weak.” So they hold it down, making it worse, which leads them to make bad decisions sometimes, either hurting themselves or others.  I feel like there aren't enough people out there who are willing to help or even care about how people feel besides themselves. I think I would be able to make a change to that, and that is also the reason why I think the money going towards me and my college fund is worth it. I would say to keep betting on me, I know I can and will do big things.