About Me.

I always have a hard time writing an introduction about myself, mostly because I never know where to start or what to say and what not to say, but I guess I’ll just start at the beginning.

My full name is Sylvia Mary Atieno Obell. I was named after my dad’s sister who died shortly before I was born.

My parents are both Kenyan, they came to America for college where they met and decided to stay here when they got married.

I consider myself lucky to know my roots and where exactly I come from because as a race a lot of black people have been robbed of their history.

I was born in Newark, New Jersey on February 6, 1990, the same exact day Nelson Mandela was released from jail.

I have one younger sister named Christine and we are eight years apart.

I moved a lot throughout my childhood. I went to a different school basically every year until high school.

I’ve lived in various cities in New Jersey, Kansas, and New York. All together I’ve lived in 13 houses. I believe moving around so much has made me a friendlier more sociable person and also made me very open minded.

I’ve also traveled to Kenya three times, Amsterdam, and London.

I currently live in Trenton, NJ, it is where I’ve lived the longest so I consider it my home. My parents divorced when I was 14 so I currently live with my mom and sister.

I’m very into community service. I’ve volunteered my time to nursing homes, shelters, AIDS and cancer walks, Christmas toy drives, serving Thanksgiving dinners and much more.

In my spare time I enjoy reading, writing and listening to poetry, listening to music, watching TV/movies, shopping, basically the average things girls like to do.

North Carolina A&T was among my top three college choices, and what made me decide to come here was the Dowdy Scholarship offered to me.

I am a sophomore here at A&T and during my time here I have become a member of; The Honors program, NYNJ Connection, the A&T Register, and the Aggie Alarm (the Honors Program newsletter).

I have also served as a PR agent for the Celebrity Charity basketball game that took place during Aggiefeast, as well as an Honors Mentor for this year’s freshman in the honors program.

Writing started off as a type of therapy for me, a way for me to express my feelings during some hard times in my life, over the years it became a true passion of mine.

I am also very into magazines, I love the power publications like ESSENCE, SEVENTEEN, EBONY, etc, have to positively influence and inform people. For those reasons I choose to be a Journalism major with a concentration in print.

With my major I want to become a writer for a magazine and eventually work my way u

p to Editor-In-Chief.

Another long term goal of mine is to write a book one day.