How Job Corps Changed My Life

I came to St. Louis job corps in June with goals of getting a high school diploma and doing carpentry. A few people were telling me that I was not going to be able to get the program but I push the issued. My family needed me to experience this so it would give me structure in life and figure out how to be a man. In secondary school all I wanted to do was play games and goofy off and go to the boxing gym and not do my work while every one of my peers advanced on and I didn’t. When I really got selected in this program I was thinking this was a joke or it wasn't for me, before I even gave it a chance yet I began to understand this is my last chance in discovering what it is to be successful in life.

My mother couldn’t afford daycare and she didn’t have a lot of help from family. That means I was left to attend to her duties a lot. At the age of seven I was cooking, cleaning, making sure my brothers had their baths before my mother got home. I had to make sure they were feed, in bed or ready for bed once she got home. By the time my mother got home she was too exhausted to help me with any homework. My mother was too exhausted to notice that I was so far behind in school. She was too exhausted to notice I couldn’t read. But had to work two jobs to take care of her children because my father wasn’t helping at that time in our life.

After speaking to my mother about my situation she recommended that I should try going back to job corps and get my high school diploma. I had agreed with my mom’s suggestion and I applied to go to Woodland Job Corps center and about a month later I came here. To be honest when I first got here I didn’t like it at all but after a while I began to like it here. So far I am doing pretty well in the carpentry trade and high school diploma class. I tabed out of the reading test and I have a high score on my math tabe. So far I haven’t gotten one write-up and I have been staying out of

But my aunt stepped up and helped and took the ‘’mother’’ role which helped out alot and made things better. Eventually we started to call her mom and looked at her as our mother since our mom was not there. A few years went passed and I was 13 years old. I get a phone call from a random number and when I answered it I was shocked because it was my mom on the other end of the phone. She broke the news that her sister died and she was catching a flight back here to attend the funeral and she wanted to see me and my brother. Me and my brother both agreed to spend time with her once she got off her flight and got to my grandmother’s house. Once she got home she had good news for me and my brother and that news was that she was staying home and she was not going back to

It was the middle of June and I was ecstatic. School was out and I was ready for fun days in the pool, going to camp, and hanging out with friends. In the back of my mind I had something that really kept me from all of the fun I could have been having. I knew that my mom was dying. I knew that if I would have fun, I would feel guilty knowing that she couldn’t experience that with me. One would imagine that I would choose to spend time with my mom knowing that I wouldn’t have her for much longer. Being the selfish little seventh grader that I was, I chose to never be home. Whenever I found an opportunity, I left. I would hug my mom goodbye and leave as quickly as possible. Whenever I didn’t, I huddled in my room under the warm covers of my bed

My freshman year, my parents got a divorce. This changed every aspect of my life. Although, this was a big change in my life I did not let it affect me too much, I was able to keep myself going through my daily life as I usually would. My ability to not let the situation affect me was not shared by other members of my family. It seemed that both my mom and my sister were having a hard time moving on. They were calling out for help, they wanted someone to be with them during this hard time in their life. It was painful to have to watch them struggle to be able to move on with their lives. I felt an obligation to help them move on, to spend time with them, to be there for support. Throughout my sophomore year I dedicated most of my time to being

For the past 3 years since I graduated high school, I have overcome many issues. All of a sudden I had no money, no job, and no father. I found out I had more brothers and sisters that I never knew about for the past 15 years. My father, who was the head of the household, decided to one day get up and leave. I had to get a full time job in order to cover my family’s expenses. I had to get a full time job in order to cover my family’s expenses. We struggled with paying bills and making sure we had food in our fridge. While working 45+ hours a week, I had little to no time for school. I did not have time to study and sometimes I couldn't even make it to class. All I knew is that I didn’t want to stop attending school because for me it meant

I look back when I was younger and I realized how even when all of this was happening my mom was never unsuccessful to take care of me and make me the happiest little girl. The hardest times were leaving my mom’s place and having to stay were my dad was staying. I always hated leaving my mom, it killed her as much as it hurt us. When I was getting dropped off at my dad’s place I knew it was going to be hell. My dad would be staying with his parents, the house was in an especially bad area which meant we could never go outside and play. We were always up in a tiny bedroom that my sister, dad, and I would share. He didn’t have a job so we could never go out to

I’ve never felt any particularly good feelings about school, especially high school. In my first two years of public school, I found that I didn’t like my teachers and classes. I started ditching to avoid the boredom, hanging out with friends instead of doing schoolwork. My mom noticed me falling so far behind, so she reached out to a friend who worked at a different type of school. I was signed up and started that school in my junior year. I was still far behind, and wasn’t fazed much on the fact that I might not graduate. By the end of junior year, I was spoken to by my counselor and given the reality of the situation I was in. I wanted to be a teacher, an English as a Second Language teacher to be exact. My dream was all but fiction if

Because it was my last one, I was determined to make my senior year my best year of high school. My mom and I talked for weeks in the summertime about how much fun senior year would be- my last first day, assemblies, homecoming, spirit days, football games, prom, Senior Ditch Day, graduation... Before the first quarter had even really begun though, my mother began to lose large amounts of energy. My family and I never noticed. Momma was good at hiding things she considered to be unpleasant. This unhealthy secretion led to my mum losing her hair and eventually her ability to walk. The following night my mother was rushed to the hospital. While she was there we learned that my Mum had contracted thyroid cancer, CMV, in addition to another life-threatening autoimmune disease that attacked her vital organs (my mom called it super-Lupus). This news seemed to kickstart an extended series of unfortunate bad days for my family. My momma went on to spend several weeks in the hospital requiring of her periodic surgeries, blood transfusions, weeks of isolation and radiation treatments, and what seemed like hundreds of syrups and pills each day. Without my mother present, things at home seemed to fall apart. As the oldest, I found it difficult to care for my three younger siblings sufficiently, let alone as adequately as my mum had, while my father spent all day at work. I wondered if this whole experience was some type of horrific joke and every day I prayed that it would end.

When I got into high school I went through many things that could have put me behind in my studies but I decided that I was going to push through my hardships and be the best student I was made to be. By the time I was a junior in high school it became very clear that I was going to have all the credits I needed to graduate by the end of the first semester, and that I would be able to graduate a whole year early if that was something I desired. Who wouldn’t want to finish high school a whole year early? Before I jumped the gun on that idea my counselor told me about a program where I would be able to attend a college my senior year of high school, for completely free. That is where I ended up and in the fall of 2014, I started at Cincinnati Christian University as a PSEO student. I took a lot of general education courses and was off to a fantastic start for college. Cincinnati Christian University is not where I wanted to stay though, I wanted to become a Nurse Anesthetist, although I fell in love with CCU. When I transferred, I was not feeling

When I was six years old my brother died as a result of the complications of his heart condition, this loss placed enormous financial and emotional strain on my family. When my mother was finally able to join the work force it was 11.5yrs since she had left, which limited her ability to obtain employment at a pay level comparable to her peers. She also had to deal with a husband who was still at sea and a grieving child who needed her to be available which again made employment options limited. She was finally able to obtain

When my mother heard this heartbreaking news about my father, she didn't know what to do because she wasn't working and she had to stay home to take care of my youngest sister because my mother knew that we lived in a terrible neighborhood where there are various gangs and gun shootings. My mother and I could not take that chance, so I realized that I had to take the obligations of my father bills because he was behind, and there was no way to catch up if there wasn't someone working. Especially after hearing that he was going to be sent away to prison for one year, announced

First, I am my mothers oldest child and have always been here for my mom and try to help her out as much as possible. Growing up we moved all over the United States, and then came back after 6 years. My dad dropped us off her in Vegas and just left back to Georgia for 7 years. Everyday my mom, my little sister and I would wonder if he would ever come back. Having no choice to stay with my uncle, we had to make the best out of the situation. Times got really hard and some days were tough because we were lucky to have enough money to eat one time a day and had to drink sink water. Waking up three hours earlier to walk to school by myself at 6 years-old! Yes, I know sounds crazy but no one could watch my sister while my mom walked with me. My sister only being 6 months old and my mom not able to afford diapers she had to

I knew for a fact, that my life would be different from the rest of the kids my age, since I was born in a border city being El Paso, Tx and at the early age of four, I witnessed the divorce of my parents. I had to say goodbye to the perfect family that I’ve always dreamed of as well as to the life I’ve always wanted to experience. After the divorce I stayed with my mom since she had my custody, and that’s where the hardest part of my life began. My mom had of course the huge responsibility of taking care of me while she was attending college at the age of 26. It was hard for her being a single mother trying to get through college in order to improve our lives but it was also hard for me since, I would have spend the majority of my