I Knew From A Young Age

Growing up, school was not a major factor in my life. I come from a hard-working, middle-class military family. My mother, a Filipino immigrant, was a homemaker. My father was a 21-year United States Marine veteran. They were my first impression of what I thought my future would be. Being the youngest of four children, I was expected to fall in line behind my siblings when it came to education. I was never pushed to excel in my studies, so I did just enough to get by. As I watched friends escape the grasp of a military town and ascend to their respective colleges, I was left wondering what was next for me. I attended my local community college for a brief period of time. I treated college no different than high school. I

My maternal aunt gathered us together and we all sat on the couch. She turned to my mother and told us she had cancer. I looked at my aunt and I did not know what to say or how to respond. Three months later, my father received a phone call from his sister telling him that my pregnant cousin, Elizabeth, was diagnosed with leukemia and had to give birth to her premature baby. She and I grew up in the same house in Arizona and what hurt me the most was not being able to be with her during this difficult time. When we went to visit her in Arizona, my dad told us before entering the hospital room that he did not want us to cry in front of her. I was scared to enter. I did not know what to say to her but I knew I had to be strong. We stayed there for the holiday season but we never celebrated the holidays, that was too

When I graduated high school I had no idea what I wanted to do, all I knew is I was done with public school and could live my life as what I thought an adult was. My father and most of my family believed it was important for me to go to college, and get a kick start with my life. Though they weren’t wrong, I had no idea what I wanted to do and no discipline to do my studies to the full extent of my abilities.

When the enormity of the fact that my decision to go to college or not to go to college hit me I decided to put all my efforts into getting into college. I started by talking with my school counselor so that I can organize all my information so that I could make informed decisions and not blunder through my college

I had lacrosse practice on the hottest day of summer. The best day was going to jump off a cliff and die. Practice was done and I was hungry for food. I got in my mom’s car and asked my mom to go somewhere and get some food. We went to Taco Bell. I finished and was ready to go home and get a shower. We were going down the road and suddenly my mom got a phone call from my aunt. As soon as my mom started to talk to my aunt she started to cry and break down. She

Life is all about choices, and the one choice I knew I wanted to make was to go to college and achieve my educational goals. Knowing that my family could not support my two older sister’s college endeavors let alone mine, I knew I had to act. Throughout my high school years, I applied myself constantly through taking challenging coursework and involving myself in clubs that I was passionate for. All of those years led me to overcome the biggest obstacle a senior student

I remember all the meetings I had during my senior year. They were all suppose to help us prepare for college. All my friends knew what careers they wanted and what they wanted to be in life. Then there was me, I had no clue what career I wanted or what interested me. Knowing that, I was scared to even apply to a college. I was able to overcome the fear of attending college by talking to my 12th grade english teacher and forcing myself to apply to college.

There is also the aspect that I want to go to college because it is what is expected of me. Only my mom really completed college and got a degree. On my dad’s side completing college isn’t really a big thing. Despite that, everyone from both sides of the family expects me to complete college and I want too, for them and for me. In fact, I want to do more than just complete college, I want to go on to get my masters and my doctorates to prove to myself that I can. I want to live above and beyond the expectations set before me and college is what gives me that

Everyone when they were younger say what they want to be when they older right? My plan was to always go to college after high school. I choice to go to College now because it's at the right time graduating right after high school this year , might as well start college now and take no years off to get things moving quicker and hopefully get my career if I do well in college which I hope . In my opinion it's better to start soon then later. There were a few individuals in my life that continuously tried to influence me to attend college. I had several family members that were attending college, and a couple that had already graduated. Being around my family always made me think about my lifetime goals career and education wise

Entering into college, I wanted to do public health, but I wanted to be a doctor to please my father and to satisfy his hunger to have a doctor in his family. My father made sure his children went to college, and if they didn’t, it was clear they couldn’t stay in his house anymore. My parents struggled to support all of my siblings and supply each of us with everything we needed. I never realized the struggle until I got older and understood the value of money and time. My parents never wanted my brothers and I to work while we were in school, they wanted us to focus on our grades and activities that would help us get into college. Overall, the support from my family and seeing how hard my

Every since I was a child my parents always spoke about college.A dream of theirs has now become a huge goal for me, to be the first in my family to attend and graduate college. In the third grade, after getting a good grade on my tests their faces would light up and would tell me how proud they were of the intelligent young lady I was becoming and how they wanted me to make something great out of myself, but most importantly impact and change something in the community. As a little third grade girl I smiled and noded without fully grasping the meaning of what they were talking about. By the age of ten I knew what they meant and that’s how I knew that pursuing law school and becoming a lawyer is what I wanted to do with my life,

Unfortunately, I had friends who were into gangs, did not care about school and their future goals. Instead of me backing up from them so that they were not a bad influence on me I decided to be the influence on them. I reached out for counseling in my school for them, some did make a difference and others did not care about changing their lives. Seeing my friends going through tough times in their lives and not wanting to persuade a higher education, encouraged me to become stronger and more passionate about having a better education for me and a better future for my family. I have cousins my age and younger who are already married, have children and did not consider obtaining a degree. Many doubted my potential to go to college because they thought that I would become like them. I believe things happen in life for a reason and those things whether good or bad, make us stronger. Until this day, I do not let any bad influences get into my life. When friends invite me over to a party, I prioritize school over partying. Some call me boring, but they do not understand that my education is my life at the moment, and that I should not take it for granted. College is definitely making me a stronger knowledgeable person and makes me cherish the smallest things in life because many do not have these

February twenty-third 2010 was just a regular ordinary day. I was on my way to class on this cold February afternoon, when my phone rung. It was my cousin on the other end telling me to call my mom. I could not figure out what was wrong, so I quickly said okay and I hung up and called my mom. When my mom answered the phone I told her the message but I said I do not know what is wrong. My mom was at work and could not call right away, so I took the effort to call my cousin back to see what was going on. She told me that our uncle was in the hospital and that it did not look good. Starting to tear up I pull over in a fast food restaurant parking lot to listen to more to what my cousin had to say. She then tells me to tell my mom to get to

For many, after graduating high school the next big step is college. I never asked myself why or if I even wanted to. Yet, since I was not yet ready to join the work force, and didn’t want to disappoint my parents, I simply followed the path that I was supposed to take. For a while I had no direction, but through the loss of my high school English teacher and my dream of making my family proud, I discovered that college was the place I wanted and needed to be.

I grew up on a small farm in a small town. My parents are both educators at the school I grew up in. To my surprise my parents were not thrilled when I told them I had a passion for education. Their first words to me were, “are you sure,” “don’t you think you are wasting your intelligence,” and “you’re not going to make very much money.” This was discouraging coming from the two people I thought I would look up to going into my future career. I was at a loss for some time, until I sat down with my grandfather one day after church. He asked me if I had decided what I wanted to do after college. To this I replied, I want to be a teacher. Expecting the same response as my