Growing up can be challenging even with the ideal surroundings. Your teen years are even more puzzling because you seem to be stuck in between being a child and an adult. Throw in not having a father or mother around and life gets difficult. The year 2001 was a difficult year for my family and the nation. My life growing up wasn’t picture perfect, but in one very long month I learned that kindness from those around will help you endure and survive.…
Change. From the first breath inhaled to the last, we change hundreds, thousands, of millions of times throughout the entirety. These changes may not always be so obvious, whereas others are blaringly distinct. Change is inevitable, especially as the environment, technology, economy, and people develop. Us, human beings, we are flexible, able to adapt and survive. However, as we adapt to these changes, we can not let these changes compromise our beliefs and principles by which we abide and hold close to our hearts.…
My mother, sister, and I were driving down Highway 124 on a hot July day when my mom screamed and slammed on the breaks. Fear rushed through our bodies. Outside the car window, a short young African American man was launched into the air. As he came down, a loud boom sounded as his body helplessly rolled off the hood of the faint green Toyota Corolla in front of us. The man lay motionless in the road while we waited for what seemed like hours for the driver to exit the car. His red shirt and gym shorts were ripped. The driver of the opposing car threw the vehicle in reverse in a spasmodic action in an attempt to end the man’s life. The injured man made an effort to crawl onto the Wendy’s sidewalk, forcing his body up on the curb to evade the car. The driver drove up onto the curb and blew its tire, just barely missing the wounded man. Realizing the driver would stop at nothing, my mother drove her white suburban in front of the car, blocking the violent perpetrator from doing any further damage.…
My cultural background is Native American, Scottish, Irish, and Canadian; I have been taught a lot about our cultural background throughout my life. I have also been lucky in the area I grew up. I grew up in a very culturally diverse area. Many of my friends from elementary school through high school were from many different cultures. I grew up eating food at friends house that to this day I still cant pronounce.…
I always keep this poem and picture in my wallet. I take it everywhere with me because it means quite a lot to me in two very different ways. One of those ways is because it holds sentimental value. When I was younger I learned to read very late in life and I was always so embarrassed of that. My father knew that I was struggling and bought me the book, Where the Sidewalk Ends. It is a book full of poems and little pictures written by Shel Silverstein. I remember opening the book to ta random page, and it was the page with this poem. I then remember my dad asking me to read it to him. I was so uncomfortable, even thought I was just going to be reading to my dad. He gave me some words of encouragement, and even thought I was not able to read…
An example of my determination is me raising my average from an 82 in freshman year to a 93.4 in junior year. An example of me being adaptable is how I moved many times over the course of my life and dealing with hurricane sandy and was still a successful student. An example of me being hardworking because I am able to manage school and work.…
I was in at Save-A-Lot a couple of weeks ago and while I was in line to check out, I overheard a lady talk about a man that was following her on the walking path behind my house. She was talking about how this man would follow her for a couple hundred feet then stop, completely strip down, and would start performing sexual acts on himself. She said that she doesn’t feel comfortable walking on the walking path anymore. We need to take action to stop these things from happening and make the walking path safer.…
Christianity has always been apart of my life. My grandparents, parents and siblings are strong christians and always encouraged me to become one. When I was about four I was at a Christian camp that my family had always gone to and I decided then that I would give my life to Christ. But honestly at four years old I had only given my life to Christ because that's what everyone else did. Through my early teenage years I had lost my connection with Christ. There were so many difficult situations I was going through that Christ seemed so distant from me and what I needed. But turns out what I really needed was Christ. At the beginning of my sophomore year I began to go to Young Life, and what a difference Young Life made on my life. Young Life…
Ever since I was born, I was a military brat. Not knowing where to call home, or if any place could be home, I moved. I moved six times, four of those places were towns that nobody could think about. Germany, North Carolina, Alaska, North Carolina, Germany, and Alaska, yet no place to call home. May 22, 1999, my first day on this world; Kronach hospital had its first American baby in their hands, yet they acted like I was a different species. The only event I remember was when I was about one. While I was one, I grabbed everything in my reach, even a grill handle. As a baby, I did not know that the handle was moving, the grill top had smashed my thumb. Ever since that event, I now have a starfish mark on the side of my right thumb from where the stiches were.…
Socioeconomic status has also played a role in in who I am and how I behave. For most of my life my family has been well off, we weren’t rich by any means, but we weren’t poor. We were part of the middle class. Because of my economic status, I wasn’t on the government lunch program at school. My family could afford to provide a lunch from home every day. During elementary school, I was embarrassed that I had to bring a lunch from home. Looking back now I see that I was lucky. I had the opportunity to eat fresh fruits, veggies, and who grains. This in turn has influenced the way I eat now. Because I was raised on healthy food, I have come to appreciate food that is good for me, and I enjoy it!…
My first home for many years. This land comes rarer to me as the day…
Most children develop pretty similarly. They are born, they learn to crawl then walk and then run. My life didn’t start that way. I was born in February of 1994 in Redwood City, California to two loving parents. My parents were in their late twenties when they had me and were anxious to start a family. They had been married for seven years by the time I was born so I was brought into a very stable environment. Although my mother had taken good care of herself throughout her pregnancy, my health upon birth was not what they expected it to be. My mother recalls seeing me for the first and asking the nurse what was on my back. It was soon realized that I had a closed meingocele on the lower section of my back meaning that I had Spina Bifida.…
Growing up as a little kid I really didn’t have any toys or friends to play with. My dad works in construction, I asked him one day if he could built me a little play house for me, he told me that he would think about it. Until the next day he brought in some wood, nails, paint… so on and so forth to build the house. Now, this house was like no Barbie house, this house was a life size house for a little kid. I remember helping my dad drawing and building it to make it looked all pretty. The house look like a real house, it had a door with a door knob, and a window. The house could even fit in my blue chair with letters on it so I can go inside, sit down and eat my snacks in there. I loved it so much I would usually take my naps in there.…
In the early morning hours of my twenty-second birthday, I awoke abruptly to my father’s voice commanding, ’Get up, quick! Fire is coming over the hills!’ Half dressed, moving through a powerless house, I stepped into the front yard. Like a picture captured into my memory, I witnessed the intensely bright ember glow of fire coming up and over the ridge lines, lighting up the sky and surroundings in a think orange haze. A flurry of sounds consumed my ears, exploding propane tanks, snapping tree trunks, and the desperate honking of neighbors trying to evacuate. Dad was spraying down the roof with a garden hose while I got hold of my cat and emergency grab bag; I was prepared to face the worst.…
I would consider my family and I to be in the working class status, which is also defined to be under as a lower-class group. My family has worked extremely hard from having absolutely nothing to something. They migrated from Mexico to the United States for better opportunities, since in Mexico there were insufficient jobs for my parents to even have a home or food. My parents first moved to Florida where I was eventually born. We then moved to North Carolina when I was about a year old. I honestly never knew there was such a thing as social classes and the meaning of it each class. Since, I can always remember my family have shared similar characteristics to that of a lower-class family.…