My Experience In Everyday Life

Today, fifty-odd years later, I sit on my porch alone, swinging gently in the morning. I can look out over the yard. It looks just the same as the place were my most important moment of my life happened. I’ve kept it like that, so I never forgot. It's a large yard, that looks like a tiny meadow in a forest. It’s the height of summer right now, so all the trees are full and green. Just like it was then.

“Poke the porcupine! Poke, poke poke,” yelled my brother, Matt, as he jabbed his fingers into my ribcage. This game made the three hour car ride to Maine feel like eternity as the middle seat had my name engraved upon it (one of the perks of being the youngest child). My sister stared at the alluring landscape as we drove down the street, welcoming my family to Nana’s house. Pulling into the driveway, I am greeted by Nana, Papa, and Uncle Dave. My siblings and I immediately explored the backyard like adventurers in a new habitat. I traveled down a scenic path, welcoming me to the salty Atlantic. I paddled as hard as I can to keep up with my Nana and Papa kayaking. My whole family then took a hike, screaming every time we saw an apple tree. As we returned to the house, I washed my grass stained shirt and checked my body for ticks as I smelt savory lobster cooking. Crunching on corn and devouring my butter soaked lobster, I looked up at the table and saw a happy family: laughing about our hiking adventures and enjoying time together. As a first grader, I was thrilled to practice my reading skills to my Nana as she corrected my mispronunciations. Maine was a sweet escape, and I never wanted to leave. The only worries in my mind were the grass stains on my shirt, and removing the tick cemented in my leg.

“Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you”. That is what my dad was saying in the big screen in front of me, quoting Aldous Huxley, next to my mom, both smiling widely and a bit dewy-eyed. It was a video they recorded unbeknownst to me that was being shown at the Jenkins Foundation scholarship awards ceremony; a night that will last in my memory for the rest of my life. An acknowledgment that came almost as unexpected as the realization that I would study in one of the best universities in Mexico. And, at the same time, a recognition that seemed to be just an obvious next step, the natural consequence of all that I had done and worked for up to that moment.

It is not too long ago that I decided to become a pharmacist. I lived in South Korea most of my life. Back then, I had no idea what I wanted to be other than thinking about immigrate to the United States. I had chance to visit my uncle’s college graduation when I was a little boy and I only dreamed about living in the U.S ever afterward. For example, I decided to go to nursing school simply because there are more chances to move to the U.S as a nurse. The problem was I did not do well in terms of academic performance because I only thought about how to move to the U.S. Additionally, I admitted to hospital couple of times because of a pneumothorax so my gpa bottomed out.

As I boarded the charter bus to my second year of Unidiversity (an annual summer youth trip in Tennessee), I could not begin to imagine the person I would become as a result of this trip. As a teenager going into my last year of middle school, I was determined to have the time of my life. I wanted to have fun, make a better connection with friends, play games, laugh, and really enjoy the time with my leaders and friends. At this point in my life, I was hiding a dark secret that only two other people in my life knew about; I was bisexual. As an almost eighth grader, I was comfortable with my sexuality, but I didn’t know how to explain it to others, and although I knew my friends would accept me for who I was, something was holding me back. I would walk around hiding behind I mask that I thought was permanent, a mask that told everyone that I was one thing, when I was really another. Little did I know that I was about to rip off the mask, and show my true self for the first time in my life.

EVErY FAmILY hAS ThEIr STorY, ALL with aspects that brings them together or drive them apart. I come from a Mexican family, where family is the only thing we know. We share each other’s pain and misery and we rejoice for our miracles. We learn and grow through each other.

Despite how average my life has been thus far, especially compared to others, I have learned so much. Whether I was faced with minor complications or major decisions, I had much knowledge to gain. Regardless of the outcome of my actions, I simply reflected on what I had to learn and carried on. Because, regardless of whether I like it or not, time will continue forward, even if I’m not. If not my age, then it’s my experiences that define who I’ve grown to become.

I once stumbled across an anonymous quote that said, “Never forget where you come from, but strive for a place you have never been.” As I contemplated the statement’s significance, I was struck by the realization that I cannot point to one place or time in my life to find where I’m from. In the last twenty years of my life, I have lived on both the east and west coast of the United States, and shifted between all sorts of communities across the socio-economic and cultural spectrum. It is through my experiences in these places that I have learned to find strength in my loved ones, have confidence in myself, and look towards the future with anticipation.

Growing up I had a good life. I lived with my brother, sister, and both of my parents together as a good family. My parents really taught me how to be respectful and responsible. I was lucky to have them as good influences in my life. I am not one to disrespect anyone unless they have done me wrong. I grew up caring about school and always wanting to perform well and anything that I do. There were many challenges and events that helped me become the person I am today. One of which is when my family and I had the opportunity to visit our home country, Zimbabwe.

It was the beginning of summer after my seventh grade year. The sun was blazing, the birds were chirping, and I felt an overwhelming sense of freedom. Life seemed great, until the next day when I was bored out of my mind and had nothing to do. During middle school, I followed my brother, Isaac, around like a mime. Whatever he did I would aspire to do the same. This was no different when, bored out of my mind, I found out my brother was going to go disc golfing with the neighbor friends. When Isaac asked me if I wanted to come with, I jumped up, ran to my bike, and told him I was ready whenever he was. I had never heard of what “disc golf” was, but I knew that since my brother was doing it, it was cool! So I followed Isaac and the neighbor friends all the way to Northside Park, sweating immensely from the summer heat and from how quickly I was biking. On the first hole, Isaac gave me my own disc to borrow for the round. This sport was completely foreign to me, so I threw my disc as hard as I possibly could, in an attempt to impress Isaac and his friends. Not only did the disc go absolutely nowhere, but I threw it so high that the wind actually pushed it backwards. I felt humiliated as everybody laughed at me. Isaac, however, came up to me and explained to me how discs fly and the proper way to throw. Each hole, I could visibly see my disc traveling further than the previous hole. Every time Isaac saw me doing something improperly, he would correct me and tell me how to fix

On June 10, 2006, I woke up like any other Saturday, expecting it to be a good day of baseball. Little did I know, how much my life was about to be turned upside down. Getting the news that my father had passed away from a heart attack, at the age of 30, really took a toll on my family and I. I couldn’t let that stop me from having a successful life because he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. That meant it was time for me to step up to the plate and be a man, be a role model for my little brother, and also be the shoulder that my mom could lean on. Even though I was only 10 years old and in the fifth grade, I really grew up and matured since that day.

It’s hard to imagine what your life will be like, where it’ll take you, or what the future holds for you. If you told 13-year-old me that I was going to be on the path of 8 more years of schooling after high school, working towards a medical degree, I probably would have laughed and repeated the line that I have said so many times: “I’ll never become a doctor...that’s so gross”. At that age, my dream was to become a pastry-chef in a patisserie somewhere in the south of France, living life peacefully. I thought that I could never follow in my parents’ footsteps, sacrificing the best years of my life for the all-consuming difficulty and intensity of the pre-med track. And it is very intense. If you ever come across a pre-med student, they’re likely stumbling over the clutter of their biology textbooks and boundless research papers, frantically searching for the cure for some disease that no one can actually pronounce, all the while cramming for the MCAT that’s in 912 days because they have not yet memorized every bone in the human body. I’d like to dissociate myself from that stereotype. While most aspiring pre-med students were worrying about medical school acceptance rates, I was dreading my dad’s weekly case-study reading that he absolutely had to have my opinion on. Not to mention the countless visits I made to my mother’s work Christmas parties, where the nurses were constantly dressed in their scrubs, and I mean constantly, and the food unmistakably came straight from

I was in a dim mood. My parents had sent me away from our home town Braedon to spend time with my grandmother in the country town of Redwood, because, as they bluntly put it, she wouldn’t be around for many more years. I didn’t mind visiting my grandpa, but I hated that the fact that I had to travel out of Braedon. I loved the city-the convenience of only being five minutes away from the shops, carpets of sand stretching across the beach at my doorstep, a joyous community and my friends, only a short text away.

This was my favorite time of day, when the sun was going down, yet it was still early and you had time to do anything you pleased. The sunset was about to come out soon and the temperature was just about right, I appreciated a lot of the things I have around this time. We ate dinner and I was very pleased with the food my mother had made. I feel as if she had gotten better, or maybe I just missed her cooking and it tasted extra delicious tonight.

Everyone has to learn some things on their own. Each individual person in the world has to find their own strength, their own reason to push through the hardships. Two years ago, I went on a spring break trip to Costa Rica with my local Spanish club. Furthermore, two years ago my life forever changed with the challenge I faced on this supposedly innocent trip.