EEC3000
Resiliency
Rasmussen College
EC300/EEC3000 Section 01 ECE: Understanding Mental Health in the Early Years
Resiliency
Resiliency is defined as the ability to bounce back from stressful situations, harmful
experiences, or extreme hardships. Growing up in a very well-educated Indian family, education
was always emphasized as the most important thing we could achieve. It was talked about
constantly and it was repeated often that many people in my family had higher than a Bachelor’s
Degree and that was the ultimate goal. My father has a Ph.D. in Chemistry. His father was a
judge in India, my other grandfather was a doctor, and my sister and her husband are doctors too.
I went to college full-time for one year after high school under pressure and decided it
was not for me and my parents did not take that well at all. I continued taking part-time classes
for a couple of years after that, but then abandoned it all together. I never applied myself in
school and did not do well and as a result of this poor academic achievement did not think there
was any point in continuing since I would never be able to measure up to the standards of my
family.
A couple of years ago, when my daughter was a senior in high school, I had the
opportunity to go back and finish my degree and I decided that it was something that I wanted to
do. In my career as an early childhood professional, I had had some success and had gone from
being a teacher to Lead Teacher to the Business Manager of my center. This gave me a little bit
of confidence that I could try and tackle this again. It was important to me to try it so I could
show my daughter that we, as people, are capable of finishing what we started.
According to the American Mental Wellness Association “Someone who has several
risk factors could have more resiliency towards problems than someone else who experienced
Resiliency
Rasmussen College
EC300/EEC3000 Section 01 ECE: Understanding Mental Health in the Early Years
Resiliency
Resiliency is defined as the ability to bounce back from stressful situations, harmful
experiences, or extreme hardships. Growing up in a very well-educated Indian family, education
was always emphasized as the most important thing we could achieve. It was talked about
constantly and it was repeated often that many people in my family had higher than a Bachelor’s
Degree and that was the ultimate goal. My father has a Ph.D. in Chemistry. His father was a
judge in India, my other grandfather was a doctor, and my sister and her husband are doctors too.
I went to college full-time for one year after high school under pressure and decided it
was not for me and my parents did not take that well at all. I continued taking part-time classes
for a couple of years after that, but then abandoned it all together. I never applied myself in
school and did not do well and as a result of this poor academic achievement did not think there
was any point in continuing since I would never be able to measure up to the standards of my
family.
A couple of years ago, when my daughter was a senior in high school, I had the
opportunity to go back and finish my degree and I decided that it was something that I wanted to
do. In my career as an early childhood professional, I had had some success and had gone from
being a teacher to Lead Teacher to the Business Manager of my center. This gave me a little bit
of confidence that I could try and tackle this again. It was important to me to try it so I could
show my daughter that we, as people, are capable of finishing what we started.
According to the American Mental Wellness Association “Someone who has several
risk factors could have more resiliency towards problems than someone else who experienced
