Personal Narrative

“I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've left them,

someone should write a song about that” -Andy Bernard from the Office. I was born on January

28, 1999. I don’t remember much of what happened, but I’m sure I was there. Eventually, I

started having memories and for the majority of my life I didn’t even realize I was living in the

“good ole days”. I was loved and appreciated as a kid; even when my mom wouldn’t buy me the

toy I wanted. I had a great high school experience in my little hometown where I had good

teachers and better friends. Now I’ve been married for 2 years with a wife who loves and

supports me. Sometimes I’m able to slow down and reflect on my life and realize that in some

ways, I’m still living in the good old days. I hope that as I live my life I have a lot more

experiences like writing this paper where I can slow down and see just how lucky of a person

I’ve been. I hope as I remember and write about my life I’ll be able to see that through the good

and hard times, it’s been a life worth living. This is the personal narrative of Hadley Schmidt.

Earliest childhood memory

In the animated movie Inside Out we see a creative interpretation of what’s happening in

a young girl's brain. I highly recommend it. One of the key components of the movie was “core

memories” or key moments that made this girl who she was. Looking back I believe this might

have been my earliest memory and I wonder if it has become a “core memory” in a sense. I was

around five years old at the time and I was living with my family in a small house in Benson. I

remember that I woke up early before anyone else had gotten up. I walked outside my room
looking for the rest of my family, but something was wrong; no one was in the kitchen making

breakfast like they usually would(unbeknownst to me it was far too early for that). So I ran to my

brother's room and no one was there, then I frantically ran around the house trying to find people,

but I couldn’t find anyone. Then the horrific thought hit me, “Everyone had left me!” I rushed

outside in the cool morning and sprinted as hard as my little legs would let me up on an uphill

road next to my house.The hill seemed endless to me and I didn't make it far when I decided it

was over. My family had abandoned me.

With nowhere else to look and crying helplessly, I turned around and started the slow,

defeated walk back to the house. When I opened the door to the house, still crying, I discovered

my entire family now walking about the house. It turns out they hadn’t abandoned me, but were

now awake and slightly annoyed at the distressed crying child. I’m not sure why I remember that

experience so vividly when it happened so long ago and I was so young. I think part of it stems

from the intense fear I felt with the thought of having my entire family leave me. I think the

reason this has become a “core memory” is because of how real that abandonment felt and the

fact that even now it’s still a feeling I never want to experience again. To my five-year-old self it

had felt that I was utterly and helplessly alone. I would be happy to report back to my five-year-

old self that to this day, nineteen years later, I’ve never felt that feeling again.

My Baptism

“Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man is born of water and of the

Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God”-John 3:5. Most Christian churches believe that

baptism in one form or another is an essential part of a belief in Jesus Christ. In my church, the
church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, baptisms happen at or after eight years of age. My

baptism when I was eight is another “core memory” because it was the first spiritual experience I

can remember. It was a small ceremony inside a church with friends and family around. One of

the first things I remember about it is that just before it began my Uncle jokingly asked if I

wanted to go smoke a cigarette before I was baptized to get a few last sins in. My eight-year-old

self wasn’t sure if he was joking at first and I remember looking up at him and refusing very

seriously.

I don’t remember much else about the ceremony, but I know that I walked into the

baptismal font with my dad and he slowly lowered me under the water. I remember when I came

up I had this amazing clean feeling; it was overpowering and overwhelming. We went back into

the bathroom to change into dry clothes but I was moving very slowly. When did my dad ask me

“What’s wrong?” I responded quietly "I feel different". This “clean” feeling lasted until after the

baptism when I began eating my favorite snack, strawberries, that someone had given me as a

treat at my baptism. I remember that my little sister went to grab some from me and I hit her

away to protect my new treasure. After that the clean feeling I had, was GONE!!!

That silly ending aside, this religious rite of passage that I experienced at a very young

age had a huge impact on who I was and who I became. I became part of a bigger religious

community that shared my same beliefs, but most importantly, was there to support and help me

like a second family. A short side note, one Christmas when I was very young my family didn’t

have enough money to buy us presents for Christmas. It was after a recent move and career

change, and my family was in a bad place financially. Somehow our local church found out

about this, and right before Christmas they supplied presents for all of my brothers and sisters,

and we were able to have a Christmas. These experiences have taught me that there’s something
beyond myself. There’s a spiritual aspect to life that I wasn’t aware of, and there are genuinely

good people who are making the world a better place. That’s led me to have an optimistic

outlook on life, and made me a happier person.

Near-death experience

I’ve been closer to death more times than I would like, and not in a “that was a close call”

kind of way. Some of my brushes with death have been through long-lasting health issues that,

without medical intervention, would’ve killed me. This kind of brush with death made me face

the reality of what was happening to me. Instead of a flash of adrenaline, I believe these serious,

long-lasting problems have changed my perspective and appreciation for life. One of those

medical issues that made me appreciate life much more happened when I was fifteen years old

and a sophomore in high school. I remember it began with intense stomach cramps that would

not go away. My condition grew worse when I began passing large amounts of blood and began

to lose more and more weight. It became constant, so much so that I was losing weight and

couldn’t participate in sports, even though I loved doing so.

My parents became desperate as my condition grew worse and we couldn’t find a doctor

that knew how to help. In a last-ditch effort, my parents asked to have my newly acquired brace

removed, hoping I had a nickel allergy that was the cause of my issues. Sadly, that wasn’t the

answer and my condition only worsened. Over the coming months, I went from doctor to doctor,

and no one seemed to know what I had or how to fix it. After a few months, I had lost thirty to

forty pounds and looked pale as a ghost. The tipping point was when I went to a high school
football game to watch the team I wanted to be on but couldn’t join. While there a registered

nurse saw me from a distance and said “that boy needs to go to the hospital right now”.

Within a week or two I found myself being transferred to Phoenix Children’s Hospital at

midnight where I was hospitalized for a week. The scariest part of that experience was when they

were wheeling me in to get an MRI. As they pushed my hospital bed out of my room I began to

feel an intense pain that I would compare to a small ball slowly expanding in my gut until it had

reaching the size of a bowling ball. It became so intense that my vision began to blur and then

grow dark. As this happened two thoughts entered my mind. First, I was about to die and second,

this is terrible that I have to die with my mom watching me. I woke up a few minutes later with

no one else aware of what I had just gone through. Eventually, I was diagnosed with Ulcerative

Colitis and after receiving treatment I was slowly returning to my healthy self.

Something that didn’t change for me was how terrified I was at just how cloe I felt to

death in those few seconds. It was about five or six years before I could talk about that

experience without getting emotional, thinking about how traumatic that was for my family and

my fifteen-year-old self. Although that was a difficult experience for me, it helped me recognize

an inner strength I didn’t know I had before. I felt like I had conquered death in that moment and

that has helped me face future problems and difficulties. No one wants to have trauma or

hardship in their life, and I didn’t want that to happen to me either, but that experience has

impacted who I am today. It’s helped me feel compassion for those around me going through

medical illnesses, and it’s helped me feel appreciation for every day that my body is functioning

and I’m alive.

 My wrestling dream

“Don’t let your dreams be dreams” - Shia Lebouf. I believe one of the most powerful

things you can do is see something you know is going to be difficult, know that it’s going to take

more than you’ve done before, and then still achieve it. Sports have always been a big part of my

family’s life. My parents were both athletic when they were in high school, and they were our

number one fans wherever we played. But sometimes you’re not suited to the exact sports that

the rest of your family specializes in. Both my parents and my older brother and sister played

basketball. They were all good players, and it made sense that the next sibling was going to play

basketball as well. I was terrible. I played the backup player from 6th grade through junior high,

all the way up to my sophomore year. I was playing summer basketball between my sophomore

and Junior year when I realized that freshmen were playing better than I was. A lot better in fact.

I decided that basketball wasn’t for me, but that I still wanted to do a winter sport. So

during my Junior year, I broke a family tradition and joined the wrestling team. I had no idea

what I was doing and did terribly in the beginning. One of my most embarrassing stories was my

first official wrestling match. All I knew to do was try my hardest and essentially tackle my

opponent over and over agian. As you can imagine, after six minutes of wrestling, I was

exhausted. After a few stumbles off the wrestling mat, I literally crawled over to my team and

laid down then immediately threw up in front of an entire gymnasium of teams and spectators.

After I got cleaned up my coach (a former marine) walked up to me and said “you’re wrestling in

thirty minutes”, I almost cried. One of the funniest parts of that story is that I ended up winning

both of those matches.

 It turned out that I had the build and mindset of a wrestler, and I eventually improved

enough that I won more matches than I lost that year. I came back my senior year with higher

expectations. In our wrestling room, they had big wooden signs listing the various wrestlers that

had placed 1st through 6th in state over the years. Every practice I looked up at those signs and

told myself that my name would end up on one of those lists. That was my dream for my senior

year, the second year of wrestling; to compete and place at the state level. But like the great Shia

Lebouf said, “don’t let your dreams be dreams”. To accomplish this I practiced with the best

wrestler on our team every day even though he embarrassed me most of the time. I pushed

myself physically until I became conditioned enough to wrestle the hardest opponents. As the

season commenced I focused on winning one match at a time. Eventually, I realized, “I’ve only

lost three matches!”. I would be lying to say I wasn’t surprised at my success.

At the end of the season, I found myself wrestling for the state title against a former

three-time state champion. I lost. I realize this is anticlimactic, but my dream had become a

reality, even more so than I had previously imagined. Instead of placing fourth or sixth I had

made it to the state championship round and had gotten second place. Until that point in my life,

I had never set such a difficult goal in my life and never had to work so diligently to achieve it.

Of course, there have been times in my life when I’ve worked for something and wasn’t able to

accomplish what I wanted. But this moment and achievement that took two long years of

dedication has taught me I can do difficult things. Even if they seemed out of reach or greater

than anything I had done before, I knew could accomplish hard things if I did what was

necessary.
 Meeting my wife

“Wuv, twu wuv, will follow you, foreva” -the priest from The Princess Bride. After I

returned from my two-year service mission for my church in 2019 I developed a fear of girls (yes

a twenty-year-old can develop a fear of girls). I never seemed to know what was the right thing

to do or say. It was bad enough that one of my friends offered to give me the number of a girl he

knew and I refused. Interestingly enough, my mom later told me that I should ask the same girl

out on a date, to which I also refused. “I would never date someone that my mom introduced me

to!” I thought to myself. After a few months went by, I grew up and eventually decided that I

would try dating again. It was July 2020 when I remembered that my friend had offered me the

number of a girl and I had turned it down! So I went back to my friend and asked him for her

number again.

Listening to this story from my wife’s perspective, it’s a surprise that we ever got

married. She later complained that I texted her to ask her on a date instead of calling her and, to

make matters worse, my car was messy when I picked her up for our first date. Let’s say that I

was officially out of practice with the dating game. Luckily, on our long drive to our first date,

we overcame the initial awkwardness and had a great conversation. I loved how easy it was to

talk to her and she later said she was surprised at how smart I was. To this day I don’t know

whether to take that as an insult or a compliment. We went on another date and I made it clear

that I didn’t want anything serious. Her response: “Well, as long as we’re not serious, I’m not

going to kiss you.” I responded that was fine, and then proceed to try and spend every other day

with her.
 After a month, we still hadn’t kissed, but my future wife began to wonder why I was so

delusional and kept saying I didn’t want a girlfriend when it was obvious how much I wanted to

be with her. Eventually, it was my friends that became the tipping factor. They cornered me and

asked what the heck was wrong with me and why I couldn’t “man up” and ask her to be my

girlfriend already. So that night at 12:30 a.m., after begging her to let me come see her, I

“manned up” so to speak and asked her. She said yes, but barely. I had a lot of ground to cover

before I made it into her good graces again.

Later I manned up even more and scrapped up enough money to buy an engagement ring.

I had the perfect plan, I was going to hike up to a beautiful overlook and ask her to marry me

when she wasn’t expecting it. What I didn’t plan for was how nervous I would be and I was

noticeably quiet the entire hike up. At the end of the hike, I popped the question and she said yes.

On the way down I was noticeably less nervous and I began to make up for all of the talking I

didn’t do on the hike up. Embarrassingly, much of it was about the Roman history I had recently

learned, but it was mostly a one-sided conversation anyways because my wife was distracted by

the new sparkly ring on her hand.

As I stated before, it was quite obvious that I was not the best at the dating game.

Someone as smart and beautiful as my wife had every excuse to write me off as a “messy, ill-

mannered, and undecided screw-up”, but she didn’t. She was patient with me and slowly saw me

straighten up as I recognized how much I loved her. Eventually, she fell for me; not for who I

was, but for who I was becoming. I’ve always had doubts that I was enough, and it surprised me

when I found someone who said I was. Her influence has helped me keep going and hoping

when I had already lost all hope in myself. The experience of being with and marrying my wife

has helped me be patient with myself and who I can become. Some might say that it was a
miracle that I got married, but I think the truer miracle has always been how I was able to find

someone that believes in me as much as my wife does.

Chasing my dream career

Of all the careers I wanted as a child, a teacher was never one of them. I remember

wanting to be an astronaut, a national geographic cameraman, a bush pilot, and, I think, a spy at

one point. I don’t believe that many children plan on being a teacher, but the older I got the more

it made sense to me, and the more people suggested I do it. It was at the end of my senior year

when my then-girlfriend said “You look like a seminary teacher.”. When I asked her why she

just shrugged and said, “You just do.”. I filed that comment away and didn’t think about it for

several months until I started my missionary training. There was another missionary that I had

never met before who said “Hey, you kinda look like a seminary teacher”. I’ll be honest, I

freaked out a little. “Who told you that?” I asked, “Where did you hear that from?!”. There

wasn’t any explanation just the simple response: “You just do.”. Now there were two files filed

away at the back of my mind and I thought of it more and more as my mission went by.

After I came home, one of the first things that happened was that my old seminary

teacher reached out to me and asked if I was ready to be a seminary teacher. That was a little

much for me, but then another person asked about it a little later. “What in the world?” I thought

to myself, “Is there a secret conspiracy of people trying to get me to be a teacher?” I wondered.

One night I put some serious thought into what I wanted to do. I settled on the question “Who

can I best serve in this world?”. Before I knew it, one of the groups of people that I had written
down was youth... as in teaching youth. A little exasperated at this point I pointed my finger at

the sky and said “FINE! I’ll do it!.

As I strarted the process of becoming a seminary teacher, I remember being told that

becoming a seminary teacher was difficult, but I had no idea how difficult it would be. First, you

have to be observed while you’re teaching to see if they would even accept you into the program,

then you were accepted into a semester-long program where they try to help you improve. After

a semester of training you have to then be observed again to see if you will be accepted into a

part-time position. After that you’re observed while you teach part-time to see if you’re

improving enough to be hired full-time. And on and on and on it seemed to go.

After a year and a half of this process struggling and hoping and praying I found myself

being observed by the region director of the area. I was terrified. To help prepare, I worked on

this intricate PowerPoint that I could lean on during the lesson. I came in early to prepare for the

class but something went wrong. When I was trying use my laptop where I had saved my

PowerPoint it wouldn’t power on and flashed me an error number I had never seen before. I

grabbed my senior seminary teacher and asked “What should I do?! I planned most of my lesson

on that PowerPoint!”. He stayed calm and told me “You have to depend on who you are and

what you know and not the PowerPoint.”.

I remember shaking a little bit when I started teaching, seeing that older bald man staring

at me in the back of the classroom. But I listened to the advice of my old seminary teacher and

depended on who I was and what I knew. After the observation, I nervously waited for the news

and…I had passed. To this day I think God ensured that my computer had shut down so I could

show how good of a teacher I was instead of how good of a PowerPoint creator I was. In the end,
I became part of the 5% that was offered the position of a full-time seminary teacher. Becoming

a seminary teacher was not the career I had planned or thought I had ever wanted. As I said

before, I wanted to be an astronaut or maybe even a spy. After a lot of thought and confusion, it

was when I finally asked the right question “Who am I best suited to help?” that something

meaningful started to develop in my mind. I think a lot of the time we focus on what we want to

have as a career, as opposed to who we can best help. Once I focused on the people I could best

use my talent and abilities to help instead of my own selfish desires, everything fell into place.

That’s a little like life I suppose, the more you focus on others, the happier you are and the more

life you’ll have to live. But the more you focus on yourself, the less life you’ll have, and the less

happy you’ll be.

Conclusion

“I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've left them,

someone should write a song about that” -Andy Bernard from the Office. The more I’ve reflected

on my life the more grateful I’ve become, and the more I’ve realized how much of the “good ole

days” I’ve already lived. I’m twenty-four now and I didn’t think I would have a lot to share when

it came to a personal narrative. But as I’ve written I've been surprised at how many experiences

have come rushing to my mind. This personal narrative has made me reflect on my life and who

I’ve become because of it. At the beginning of the paper, I stated that after writing about my life

I’d hope to find that my life has been worth living. I think that depends on what I do with it in

the future. I owe so much to all the people that have loved, supported, and raised me that I’m just

now in the position to start giving back to the world. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed think about
all that was sacrificed and all that was given me to get me up to this moment in my life. At times

I wonder if I can even do enough to pay back everything that’s been given me. In four and a half

months I’m going to be a dad. I think I can try to start giving back then.

E-portfolio

When I began writing this personal narrative I was against including it with my E-portfolio. It

felt like it was overly personal and too long-winded for it. But as I continued to write and

analyze important moments in my life my opinion began to change. I will include my narrative

in my E-portfolio because it’s not just a few stories, it’s a snapshot of who I am. And I believe

that is worthwhile to share with anyone who is interested in learning a little more about who

Hadley Schmidt is.