Page 18 - Life Legacy Project

The best friend I could ever ask for. Linda Christensen. Age: 58.
“Be Yourself. Everybody else is taken.”, Mrs. C says. You know why? She said it because if you're true to yourself, you're happier. Linda Christenson, I chose you and to honor you for the Life Legacy Project because you are very special to me in life, you have helped me in 3rd grade through today (8th grade) and don’t know how to thank you for that, you have helped me so much and I just wanna say thank you so much! Linda Christensen is very smart, nice, sweet, unique, strong, caring, funny and a hardworking person. And also she is the best at baking!
Mrs. C was born in Belvidere, Illinois and born on September 29, 1958. The city that Mrs. C was born in was a very small city. Mrs. C lived with her mom and grandparents in a friendly neighborhood when she was young, but the sad thing was that she grew up with no dad, but after she turned 12, she got her first cookie recipe from her neighbor, her mom got married and they had to move a lot and Mrs. C did not like being the new girl but she got through it because she is one tough person. The neighborhood that Mrs. C grew up in was filled with little kids and all of them, including Mrs. C, would always play outside and have good times. When I asked Mrs. C “What is your earliest or most vivid childhood memory?”, she said, “I don’t really remember a special memory, but I do remember when I fell off my bike going down a hill.” My first thought about was ‘Wow”, like imagine that just riding down from a really steep hill and falling your hardest. When Mrs. C was growing up, she had a role model and that role model is her grandma. Why? It’s because her grandma gave something to her that was important, she thinks it was valuable growing up with her parents, to become a better person. The dreams and goals that Mrs. C wanted were to have a family and develop roots. What she means by “develop roots” is that she doesn’t want her kids moving like she had to go through growing up, but she doesn’t want that for her kids, she wants them to stay and one place until they were full adults. Mrs. C’s childhood had some up and downs, but overall it was a good childhood.
Mrs. C’s adulthood is a bit crazy, well actually I’m sure if you would call it crazy, maybe wild but anyways. So when I asked Mrs. C how many jobs did she have growing up, she said “Way too many” but then she said, “I was a tax collector and investigator until I got married and had kids, triplets”. If you don’t know what triplet means, its means when you have three babies in your stomach, which is rare. She had 2 girls and 1 boy, but now they're all grown up now, but when she was raising them it was a really big job to care for these kids because they were really wild, Mrs. C says “It was a big responsibility being a parent with 3 kids.” which I agree with because I can’t imagine her taking care of 3 wild kids, she said it was tough and I believe that. I guess you could say her adulthood was good as well.
Today, Mrs. C’s average is waking in the morning, getting ready to head to school, opening up her class, pour a cup of coffee, helping kids in the morning and during school, and working on math all day. After school, she goes to the Burlington Public Library to tutor kids that need help with math. She repeats the same day over and over, she says she loves to be around kids and helping them, she gives courage to students that think they aren't good at math. When I asked Mrs. C the question, “What is one thing you know now that you wish that you knew when you were younger?”, she said, “I wish that I knew that I loved being around kids.” She finally understood that when she was around kids, at Bayview. After asking that questions, I asked her the very last question, “If you could give me or my generation one piece of advice, what would you tell us?”. She answered, “develop relationships with people in person as much as you can without relying on our mobile devices.” What I think she means by that is that meeting someone in person is better than meeting someone on a device, like it’s different you know. I agree with that advice, thank you.
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I chose to interview Linda Christensen because is very caring, nice, sweet, amazing, funny, smart, joyful, loving, helpful, desirable, and wonderful person. And again thank you so much for helping me almost all my life and doing so much for me. I love you. Gracias.