How Your Academic Performance This Semester

Everything is perfectly fine, everything is great, then one day it all comes crashing down and shattered pieces are left. My life would never be the same but I guess change is for the best and it forced me to become the person I am today. It’s rough to be the oldest child, especially when your mom is diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and you have 3 younger sisters that look to you for comfort when their mom can’t be there. When the cancer is spread throughout your moms body doctors can’t just get rid of it no matter how badly you wish they could. Rounds of chemotherapy only slow it down, yet it’s still there a lurking monster waiting to reappear at any given moment. Nothing can even begin to describe the fear I felt, and still have to deal

Since I was a child, my mother would tell me to try my hardest in school. She told me thought thing because as a child, she never had the opportunity to go to school. She only completed up to 4th grade, because her family couldn’t pay the tuition to attend. She would had to wake up at 4oclock in the morning to sell food, to make a living for her family. We were fortunate enough to be able to come to the United States in 2005, but tragedy happens a year later. She received a phone call, saying that my father was in a serious car accident, on the night of Christmas Eve, he passed away. Since then my mother, became a single mother having to support two children by herself in a new country. There

It’s August 28th, 2015 I had just moved to Grand Valley State University two days ago. Its 6:15am. My cell phone is ringing. It was my brother and I thought it was too early for him to be calling me, so I sent his call to voicemail, it rang again, I thought to myself, “Why on earth is he calling me at 6:15 in the morning it’s too early for this”, So I finally decided to answer the call and I got the news that my grandma passed away. It wasn’t totally unexpected, she was on hospice care an entire week before I left for college and I’ve watched her slowly deteriorate because of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia.

A few months into the school year I got some news from my parents that referred to my grandmother. She had an accident in her home that put her in critical condition. At this point my father rose to the occasion and began to watch after my grandmother, his mom. Taking care of my grandmother was not an easy task. She was constantly being moved in-between nursing homes and hospitals. She continuously had unstable vitamin levels and her body and was just in very poor physical condition. My father held on though, he was always by her side making sure she was okay. While my grandmother won’t ever fully recover, she is doing much better. It’s because of my father that she’s still alive today. I lost more of my innocence through all this but at the same time I learned that when things get bad, family takes care of one

During my sophomore year, I became depressed and antisocial due to problems in my life. My mother has been sick with a brain tumor since 2009 and she was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2012. It has been very hard on me and especially for my mother. I worry about her because she has shown signs of severe depression, she often talks about that she would rather be dead than alive anymore. After all of the pain, all of the humiliation of not being able to walk well, the embarrassment of not being able to write well, all of the staring and comments I would hear about my mother, she is still strong. After 6 years of pain and suffering along the way, I do not blame her. Everything seems to get worse. She now needs surgery due to avascular necrosis that was caused by many years of chemotherapy. I began to lose motivation slowly because I did not have any friends in any of my classes and I felt like I was stuck in a

At a young age, having all four of my grandparents die was crushing. One in front of me, two by suicide and one to cancer. In the second grade when my dad went to rehab, not only eroding our relationship, but also tearing apart my family. As a result, during my third grade year, sleep was rare due to the echoing fighting that I would hear in the adjacent room. Meanwhile this lack of sleep only made school worse. Being called a “retard” because dyslexia made it a pain in the ass to read. This fearful environment slowly began to embed anxiety into my young self. Now that my family was begging to get tired of my hometown in Arizona, we packed our bags and moved to San Diego. In 6th grade is where I got into my first fist fight in the middle school locker room, where Mr. Beckley had to break us apart. Only giving me the “new kid” a bad reputation to some, but respect to others. The ones who began to give me respect, would only bring me down further than I already was. On to my later years in middle school where I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. Witch felt like a constant rain cloud over me at all times, where the weight of my bed sheets was too much to handle. Therefor causing more chaos in my family. This would give myself an almost constant knot in my throat ready to break down and cry at any part of the day. But like any story, there's light at the end of the tunnel. No matter how long it seems or how dark it gets, there is... Going into my freshman things

A few months ago, I was just beginning the second semester of my junior year and I felt like I was living the life. I had a reliable car, a loving family, and a great group of friends who had my back. However, in late January of that year, my little brother suffered a medical emergency that tested me and my strength as well as that of

During the 2007 I got great news, I was accepted at UNC-Charlotte. Meanwhile, I had no idea 2007 my world would be turned upside down with bad news. My mother’s broth and sister were both diagnosis with Cancer. What’s most painful both siblings pasted away six months apart? Meanwhile, more bad news came my way when I mother was diagnosis with Cancer and Renal failure. I talked to my mother’s medical team, they voice they never seen where three siblings having cancer all at once in the same year, just months apart. Consequently, my mother survived her cancer just after two chemo treatments. I came home every weekend to help with her care. One promise to my mother I made was not to drop out of school, it was important to her that I finished

I attended Squareville high school, along with about one hundred other kids. Squareville was small, population of about six hundred. I, being one of the six hundred, didn’t mean much to Squareville and I was well aware of it. I live with my mom, Joann, and my sister, Hannah; My dad passed away about a year ago. Our, now, three person, family isn’t nearly the same. We used to laugh and smile at breakfast, we used to tell jokes at dinner, and wish we could all be together during lunch but obligations made it infeasible. My dad refused to ever show he was in pain so the day my dad was diagnosed with cancer was shocking, then two weeks later he passed. The cancer was terminal and the doctors had caught it way too late. After he passed things

By the time I entered the third grade, my parents were divorced and my mom was diagnosed with bipolar, depression and I was diagnosed with ADHD. My mom has always stressed the importance of working for what I wanted. As a kid, I developed a strong passion for technology, which inspired me to come to the University of West Georgia to pursue Computer Science. My first semester here at the University, I found out through Facebook that one of aunts had passed away. I was devastated because I visited her before going off the school and even though she was in the hospital I thought that she was going to be okay. Also, I had already lost two of my other aunts the same year and they had all died three months apart. I didn’t want tell my mom that

I was sitting at my desk, looking around for any small detail that I thought I may have missed. Everything looked organized and the way my roommate and I wanted it to look. I looked at him and told him “this is our new home for a year”. Every upcoming college student dreams about moving day and my time was coming soon. Three weeks prior to move in day, I began organizing and preparing for what was coming, “What are the most important things I should bring”, “How much is the trip going to cost?”, all these questions began to rush towards my head at once and if it wasn’t for the help of my mom, I wouldn’t have been able to organize myself and pack for college.

It all started the summer before my freshman year of highschool. I was estacic about going back to school, which was not very usual for me. However, I was finally a highshcooler! This was a huge step in my life. I could finally go to homecoming, find out who my real friends were, and eventually learn how to drive. I considered myself one of the more "popular" people, which I found a huge deal if your a freshman in highschool. I had a ton of friends and played almost every sport there was. I honestly could not have been happier. At this time in my life I felt as if I was on top of the world, highschool was going to be a breeze and before I knew it I would be going to be at Michigan State University. That was until I found myself on the floor of my bedroom, curled up in a ball while the ocean poured out of my eyes the day before I was suppposed to start school. I had never felt such a horrid pain in my life. I could not breath, nobody was home, and my only thoughts at the time were that my last minutes were going to be on the fuzzy white rug in the middle of the cold

Going into college, I planned to achieve my goal of becoming a Physical Therapist by excelling as an academically-studded student. Life triumphed my naive goals and quickly introduced me to the harsh realities of the real world. In the second semester of my Freshman year, I lost one my greatest childhood companions. My teenage cousin collapsed during a basketball game due to a sudden heart attack. I was heartbroken by this unexpected news. No prior personal loss or life experience prepared me to handle the turmoil. Successive losses in the family persisted throughout the course of three years, including my two dear grandmothers who helped raise me. My Mother, my life role model, fell into a massive depression which led to the separation of her marriage. My brother, who idolized our cousin, spiraled into

In October of my sophomore year, my mother sat me down on our couch and told me she had breast cancer. My mother has a habit of spinning terrible news to sound like casual conversation. She said that we would go into this optimistic, hoping for something small or easily handled. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with stage three malignant phyllodes tumors in her right breast. Hearing this, I was devastated. My mother had recently been recovering from a car accident in which she was a pedestrian hit by a speeding vehicle. We had finally finished the multiple surgeries necessary to fix her lower spine, left shoulder, and pelvis. It felt as though we had just come out of that. It seemed unreal that we would have two physical tragedies so close

From the end of November till the 21 of December my Grandpa was put into Hospice, or a at home nursing home to prepare your loved one for death. At this time I was trying to balance my studies as well as supporting my family morally and emotionally due to the tough times we were going through. During the week of exams, my father was rarely home because of his father nearing death. This led me and my mom to provide each other with dinner and help each other. Knowing about the struggles we were having, my two uncles which were my moms brothers came over to have dinner and help up set up our Christmas tree. It was December 20th when they came over which was the day before my grandpa passed. My mom mistook me for my uncle and said my grandpa was going to die that night or the next morning. I didn't realize she said this and didn't know they were hiding this from me. I came home from my exams the next day to see my father balling due to his death. Because of the mourning process I missed one day of exams and lost complete focus in school for a short time. After I came to the facts that he was dead I started to work harder than I have ever worked before. This led to me getting the best grades I had ever gotten in my high school career and they are still getting better. While getting over death is never fully obtainable, you have to learn to be able to live with the thoughts that run through your head daily about your deceased love one. I