growing up in Detroit is how I am going to relate myself to these three concepts for autonomy, competence, and relatedness academically…as a child, you had to have some of the concepts grounded into your life … going back and forth to and from school my parents were autonomously governing my every step of the way… they taught me how to go through the tough streets of Detroit …how to handle myself during challenging situations how to keep things in their proper perspective and doing these things the right way and not getting into trouble…my survival had a religious base, mix in with street intelligence with a strong sense of education …this is how I survived my own cultural differences… I found it is in my interest to learn how to survive with some autonomy and have very strong values in my travels to school …competence which is a skill a person has in interpersonal relationships with the ability to handle different situations… this is some of the first things my older brothers taught me, my first days going to Grant Elementary School in Detroit … not only handling that our parents made sure we did our homework and studied…. they were very involved with our education in the 1970’s … this always brought some type of attention to me (from other students) during my school years…so you definitely had to handle different situations at school…I had to handle not only the situation of bringing home good grades but be tough enough to handle some the bad elements at school…in my opinion things went very well for me !!…finally, relatedness one thing I always saw my mother do when she visited my school was to reach out to others… not only did she constantly invite my teachers to church … she invited other students as well … well, to be honest, she invited everybody …this type of behavior I noticed from my mother I saw myself involved not only in sports but the Chess club, On sets team, and finally band … yes, I played the clarinet… still, do … this has given me a great love for jazz… this interaction has made me a better communicator at school and out of school as a youngster …