As the second of four highly competitive children (often referred to as the “Vitki”), I quickly learned and adapted to the norms and patterns of our family. Our aptitude to be competitive in all that we invested our time in still resonates in my daily life as an adult when it comes to group games (you do not want to face me in spoons!), sports, and vocationally. As a child it manifested in soccer, swimming, tee-ball, Girl Scouts, music classes, AWANA Bible studies, dance classes, academics, art skills, climbing trees, and computer games. This last area of competitive tension resulted in some later life-changing decisions on my behalf.
For as far as computer games go, my parents were rather strict about what we were allowed to play. All of the games were academically-oriented, be it through logic-building exercises, Latin and Spanish language developments, mathematical equations, or simply learning about geographical or cultural differences.
It was no wonder that one of our first computer games, “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?(c)” was quickly taken over by the four of us trying to win the game through learning more geographical and cultural facts than the others. To say the least, I was rapidly engulfed in learning details about El Salvador, Egypt, Korea, and Fiji in my attempt to win the game and capture the allusive Ms. Sandiego.
It has only been in recent years that I have come to realize that this simple game played a major role in my interest of cultural and ethnic differences as well as similarities between groups of people. At 6, I did not know this, but a dozen years later, when the choice of an undergraduate major was at hand, I knew that the study of people was of interest to me. This led to a medley of sociology, political science, and anthropology courses.
