California Boys State Program Analysis

Throughout my lifetime, I have had many experiences that altered me forever. The best experience that has ever happened to me was when I moved to America from Egypt. Moving to another country like America was the most life –changing experience I have ever encountered. I lived in Egypt for ten years with my parents and older brother. My family was wealthy, my mother was a lawyer, and my father was a geologist. I attended a strict Catholic school when I was in kindergarten. We had to wear a uniform every day and have it clean and ironed. Afterwards, my parents transferred me to a public school because it was closer to home. The transition into the public school was difficult because it was hard for me to make friends at that time. When we

While going to college I got to have the experience of a lifetime. Myself, and a group of 15 others went on a mission trip to New Orleans, Louisiana. We all got to see many cultural differences and help people in need. Helping people in need just

When thinking about a personal experience that has greatly affected my life, the first thought that comes to mind is the week that I spent at the California State University of Sacramento (SAC State) attending the Boys State program. The American Legion Boy’s State program is where eleventh grade boys from across the state come together to learn about how the government of California functions. However, Boys State was much more than that for me. That one week had a greater effect on my life than any other experience I have had before.

Any one person can have a number of experiences, both good and bad, big and small. Not all of these will change or shape a person, but all of them have the opportunity to depending on how they are perceived by the person and when they occur. One large experience that has drastically impacted my life is coping with bipolar disorder.

Every little mistake and success story in my high school years qualify as a factor to my personal change but by far the biggest experiences were definitely my efforts of maintaining a good GPA and the participation in the National Honor Society. Trying to achieve and keep up with my GPA was harder than it appeared but due to all the effort I can anticipate that whatever the future has in store for me I will be ready to endure. Not only was the experience of my GPA life-changing but it was also the door to bigger opportunities, one being the National Honor Society. Although I doubted myself almost every step of the way I can truthfully say the experience was transformative in the sense that it taught me morals I will cherish throughout the rest of my journey.

Recently, I have had to reevaluate my idea of success. In September, I was diagnosed with Compartment Syndrome in all eight muscle compartments in my calves. Compartment Syndrome is when pressure builds up in the muscle, either from muscle growing too quickly or from the surrounding tissue being too tight. This causes the oxygen supply to be cut off and nerves to be compacted, causing nerve damage. Because I had Compartment’s for years without knowing what was wrong, it had reached dangerous levels where I had to have four surgeries so I would not lose all feeling and potentially use of my legs. Due to knowingly letting this go on for so long and the way the muscle heals after the surgeries, there was a chance I would never be able to run again, though neither my parents nor doctors would say this to me. Not everyone that had Compartment’s to the degree that I had were able to regain full mobility to the degree they had. This was a frightening possibility for me, because so much of my identity revolves around being active, from the sports I do to after school activities, to having a job that I actually enjoy.

On one sunny day, I was helping my mom doing chores when she pulled me over to talk to me about something important. I was confused why my mom would want to me about something important, but I listened to what she said and followed her. What she told me was what her life was like back in Vietnam. She did not have much of an education. Instead, she stayed home with her mom to sell Vietnamese yogurt every day for a living. Since I was born in America, I never thought of life was like for others in developing countries like Vietnam. Hearing from my mom's experience, it stuck with me. I learned the importance of being grateful for what I have since they are a lot of people who do not have what we have in America and it made me want to help those who are in need. I was also inspired to do whatever I

Stride after stride after stride, I was oblivious to the pain in my calves or the sweat dripping down my forehead; the only thing on my mind was outdoing my summer's best time. After running close to six miles every day, I had no intention of breaking that streak. However, that hot July day I had no choice but to end it. At the halfway point, as I turned my body to look behind me, my left knee underwent a full lateral patellar dislocation. My hopes of becoming a UConn athlete subsequently came to a standstill, but I took it as a meaningful sign that I would have extra time to focus on my number one aspiration of getting accepted into pharmacy school and becoming a pharmacist.

An experience that has influenced my life was my sophomore year in high school in which I had made the Trojanette Drill Team. As a first time dancer and the lack of confidence I had at the time I didn't think I was going to open up to a cluster of girls I didn't know. Walking into the drill team room I was an introverted person who didn't believe I was worth being on the team, but walking out of the drill team room I was confident, responsible, hardworking and eager to continue the next year of dance.

As an experienced runner at the peak of my season, I injured myself in my junior year of high school. I was diagnosed with bilateral tibial stress fractures by my physical therapist. Dedication was shown at its finest. I would run four to five events a meet while in excruciating pain from my knees down. Event after event, I would cry in pain, ice my legs, and thenceforward returned right back to the starting line for the following race. After being forced to terminate my season early in order to rest, my injury exposed me to the reality of the pain that multiple athletes may be experiencing. Generally, the athletes I recognize or hear of are dedicated to their sport. I believe that the worst feeling for an athlete is being told that they cannot participate in a sport they have put a numerous amount of time and effort into. For myself, I cried for days after being taken out of my season early. I realized that I did not wish for any other athlete, let alone another person, to have to cry in disappointment due to an injury that hinders a dream or goal. At that moment I realized what I was called to achieve; I was called to prevent and treat those painful athletic injuries as an athletic trainer and physical therapist. I believe that being an athletic trainer that has experienced the pain caused by dedication, effort, perseverance, and even poor training could cause me to be more relatable to patients that I may have in the

Spring of my junior year in high school, I joined track with wishful thinking. I’m going to do track, run sprints, and get into great shape for summer. However, with my luck it didn’t work out how I wanted. A week into the track season, I went to our school’s field to play a pick-up game of soccer. In the process of going to the field, I had to climb over a fence. Simple? I really should of thought this through, but didn’t. As I jumped over and landed, a loud pop sound came from my knee loud enough for my friends to hear. I sat there crying in front of my friends for a minute or two, but got up trying to walk it off. As you can see no is not an option for me, as I tried play a soccer game with a swollen knee cap. I was confused what happened, I didn’t know exactly happened. But sharp pains were shooting through my leg as I limped around the field. Little did I know a swollen and bruised knee meant torn ligaments.

It was the beginning of the track season a few days before our first track meet. My friends and I were running around the track and my leg gets tense. Not terribly unusual I've had charley horses before, but then there's a pop and my leg gives. I stop running and my friends help me up and to the athletic trainers. They tell me I have sprained my hamstring. This was heartbreaking for me as this was the year I was going to run with my friends in the sprints and high jump as I was unable to last year due to a similar thing happening but with my feet. I was not going to accept this defeat and choose to show up every day to practice and to the trainers for rehabilitation. At meets, I would work around the track at either the high jump pit or the long jump pit. I would give my teammates words of encouragement as often as I could. I held the

My knee hurt. Why? Because I had been so focused on getting varsity that I had neglected to stretch well and take days off to relax my muscles. I knew I could get to the point where I could easily run with the varsity girls, but it wouldn’t happen overnight. I had to treat my body well and not care as much about what times the other girls got; I needed to care more about how I performed individually. One day, I thought, I’ll be able to say it don’t hurt like it used to. Slowly, I got up from the

I tore my MCL and ACL nine months ago. During my recovery, I lost all my motivation to push myself. I stopped doing my exercises and consequently stopped making progress. Instead of thinking of the long-term effect my negligence would have on my future, I was focusing on the short-term reward–no pain. Pulling myself up from this taught me how to push myself from my lowest to go beyond what I had previously settled for. I’ve learned to take things seriously from the start and to hold myself to the standards and level of commitment that I set.

This knee nightmare resulted in knee surgery that would have sidelined me from soccer for eight months if the doctor hadn’t screwed up. This donated knee cartilage from the second knee operation performed is still working in my body to this day. Life on crutches for a year had made the world slow down for me. I began to realize the bubble in which I lived in. The “core-five” became a “core-one” as I learned that the only person I could trust was myself. The happy go-lucky kid I once knew at age twelve became a curious and skeptical teen at thirteen. The real world hit me hard and it still does today.