Atayef-Personal Narrative Analysis

For many, their formative years have a large influence on who they become as adults. This can happen in many different ways including new experiences, discovering a new sport or hobby, and uncovering what they are passionate about. For me, this was falling in love with a new language from a very young age and becoming very interested in the culture that was associated with it.

At the end of my Junior year, I watched all of my older friends work on scholarships and prepare for graduation. Everyone seemed to know what they wanted to go to school for, and what they wanted to do after they graduated. While watching them, I began to reflect on the past school year, thinking back to the first week of school sitting in the locker room talking to to my friends about how we are ready to be seniors and figure out what we want to do with our lives. But, listening to all the seniors talking about their majors and schools, I began to feel nauseous. I had no clue what I wanted to do after high school. Was I supposed to have that figured out already? I then began to have questions thrown at me left and right throughout the summer.

Kevin and I stepped into a whole new world in the fall of 2009. We began our degree program at Emmanuel School of Religion, which is now called Emmanuel Christian Seminary. We were working on our Masters of Arts and Religion. I was excited and nervous about going back to college. Our first day was terrifying. Kevin and I attended orientation the week prior to classes starting. There was a definite realization this academic program was going to be a challenge. However, I wanted a challenge. On the first day of class, we started with Greek. Our professor was Dr. Marwede. He opened the class with a test. He came over to my chair first and handed me a paper with a list of Greek words on it. My immediate reaction was shock, which Dr. Marwede realized I was overwhelmed by the look on my face. He told the class we could take it home as homework. Many of the students in the Greek class had previous experience with Greek; however, Kevin and I had no knowledge at all. We were overwhelmed. We were assigned five chapters and told to return the next day for a quiz with our homework.

Growing up, my parents and I always took the time to read stories together. Before bed, before school, while playing with dolls in the bathtub. Fiction and nonfiction stories alike taught me about both the physical, literal world around me, and the world I could create in my own mind when I needed to find comfort. It was through the works of fiction, however, that I learned despite the hardships of life, I could disappear into a world I could mold however I pleased.

Last summer was my most memorable summer so far. It was full of injuries, trips, and lots of my friends. I first took a dive straight off my horse, second I went zip lining on Mackinac Island in Michigan. After that I competed in my county fair. Next, summer will have a hard time taking the place of the summer of 2015.

Imagine of being born and grew-up without having communication in your country. Back in my childhood life, I created a massive of problems with my parents, teachers, and even friends which made me felt lachrymose. Could not understand why my parents and teachers were outraged that I can feel being discriminated, abused, and humiliated. Not learning to speak and understand English until I became six. However, I spoke a couple of languages, Vietnamese and Chinese though. As a child, the time when I lived with my grandma for a while, she first taught how to speak Chinese. And when I move to live with my mom, she starts lecturing me on speaking Vietnamese. As I began proceeding to Preschool, these two languages stuck between my head. Still,

“I can’t feel my feet, guys” is what I said to my friends when I first discovered something was wrong. We laughed and made jokes as they would kick my feet and say “can you feel this? can you feel this?” Day after day I would tell myself not to worry and that this feeling in my feet would diminish over time. It only took 2 days for the numbness in my feet to disperse to the entire right side of my body. As soon as this feeling had reached my ears I decided it was time to speak up. I told my father what I was feeling and both unconcerned, we had come to the conclusion that it was simply growing pains and that we would keep an eye on it. I felt a sigh of relief as I continued on doing my everyday routine. I thought the feeling in my body would go away but every day the feeling became more severe. I woke up one morning in the middle of the night in excruciating pain and a headache that I had never experienced before. I ran to my parents bedroom in tears. It was only then that we knew something wasn’t right.

As I sit in the chair of my high school classroom I often feel remorseful of some decision I made as a young girl. these decision would affect me later on in life, and lessons would be learned from my mistakes.

I was once a very closed off person, unsure of how others may react to my loud and somewhat aggressive personality. I was wary of the possibly negative reactions I would receive, so I lived a rather quiet existence, closing myself off from the outside world. As I grew older I became unsettled with my reclusiveness, so I did what any sensible person would do, I traveled a 1,000 miles away from home to a place I have never been to with a bunch of people I had never met.

One lesson I have learned that I heard from my mom is “Everything happens for a reason.” My mom first said this on our way to the Smoky Mountains.  We had got on the expressway and the two lanes had split with a wall in between each lane.  Because of the construction, we had to drive an hour and a half out of the way.  My whole family was bummed out about arriving to the Smokies later than expected, but my mom said “Everything happens for a reason.” This has been a motto of mine ever since that trip. I think of this aphorism when things happen that is out of my control.  In the future, I hope I can still use this motto in the future to keep myself from overreacting to things I have no control over.  All in all, my mom’s motto is important to keep in mind when uncontrollable things occur.

In my last video, I noticed that I still had zero confidence in myself, like in the last paragraph, I thought I was going to be horrible and I was correct. What went well was that when I sang the second time, my hand signs were not all over the place, I was actually able to match them to the note I was singing. What did not go so well was when I sang the first time, I got mixed up and started to sing some of my partners part and some of my part. For vocal technique, I did not stay on beat, I went too fast and ended up finishing early. For this singing check, I was nervous because I was singing with someone else who was singing something completely different than me.

Mike and his wife Barb were happy to see me again. When I pulled into their driveway they were waiting outside his shop. Mike and I had made arrangements for me to purchase another ATV from him. This time I arrived to look at a 1984 Honda ATC250ex that he had restored. Mike is a shade tree mechanic who repairs old vehicles and ATVs and then flips them for a small profit. Entering his shop presents one with at least a dozen quads and dirt bikes all in a different stage of restoration. The youngest model in restoration is at least 25 years old. While most of the ATVs were in non-running condition, they weren’t treated like discarded trash. Each of Mike’s ATVs was positioned with disassembled parts sorted nearby as if every project had its own

I was just an ordinary teenager, now finally finishing out my freshman year of high school when I got this terrible “invisible injury”. My friend and I were running around on the last day of gym for the school year when out of the corner of my eye I saw a dark shadow quickly approaching my head. My whole body jolted as I tried to comprehend what had just happened, my head spun. Little did I know that my life would be transformed those quick seconds due to the chaos that was gym basketball. The summer going into sophomore year was anything but ordinary, majority of it consisting of me sitting in dark rooms playing with children's toys such as legos and play-doh, or wearing sunglasses everywhere, even inside stores at the mall. It was as

I’ve been looking forward to summer since the first day of school started. Throughout the whole 7th grade school year i’ve been wondering what my family are going to do during the summer. I was happy when school was almost over, but then I got the news. I have summer school, and it was because I have two D’s. Plus the principal told me it was summer school or getting held back and flunking 7th grade. When i got home to tell my mom she said that's sad because my cousins are planning to go to Six Flags Magic Mountain during a weekday during the summer. I had to tell them I can't go and they said ok.

I have been fired from four different jobs over the years. The effects of the most recent event took it’s toll on me, and plugged me into a depression. Victimhood was living well in my behavior. Amazingly, through a string of events, my depression lifted and I was on my way to being the man I wanted to be. During those early years of depression, I was aware of my emotions like a child is aware they don’t feel good, but can’t really tell you why.