My Experience In Life

For the majority of my life I have belonged in the little world, stretching from Chicago to Cleveland and South Bend to Nashville. The boundaries of my known world have always felt like a limiting factor in my life. While my friends ventured to far away lands every year, I would spend the night at my grandparents house or we would make a day-trip to a city. With spring break approaching my family and I were going to change that, we were going to South Carolina.

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.

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

Knowing who you are is an important step in life. Knowing your identity is something that is expected of you before you even graduate highschool. When students are being surveyed for acceptance, they are being chosen for what they have done rather than what they can do. Granted, what you have done is a good reflector of what you can do, but what you can do isn’t what you have done. I come from a family that values hard work and character. No one in the entirety of my family has any special diploma or fancy piece of paper that tells everyone what they are good at. No one in my family has any clue what I am writing about right now.

It has been an eventful four years here at Christopher Dock. I went through a lot and I am proud of who I am becoming. I am not the shy, quiet and awkward kid that I was coming here but instead, I grew into a kind, confident and selfless individual ready to take on the world. Thanks to the adversity that I went through, I was rewarded with what I desire the most in this life: God, Friends and Family. The adversity that I had go through was letting go of my past, restoring my lost faith to God and stop being dependent onto my brother Tyler. Without doing those three things, I would not be where I am today. Now I would like to reflect on my growth throughout all of these four years.

My past few years of education were, I think, the best couple of years of my school experience of my life. Teachers and friends affected how I acted, learned and studied in school.

The wind serrated past my body. I hesitated, reminiscing all the memories we treasured years ago. Sitting down on a nearby bench, looking at the emptied bus stop. I ran my fingers through the leathery pages of my small book that my father had given me. How long it has been? Five… six years? The clouds suddenly swirled and closed the sky, the thunder roared. Girls of all ages and appearances rushed through the streets as they had just finished school. I smiled mirthlessly.

“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.

“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.

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 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

Skrt Skrt! Dust blew through the air as Kiley and I sat in complete silence. Looking around in awe, I realized we finally settled somewhere other than the gravel road we started on.. Smashed and unrecognizable, the tahoe rested in the ditch next to my dad’s cornfield. What just happened? I vaguely remember my mom’s voice telling me in the past that parents set rules for a reason and although kids usually ignore not like them, they provide boundaries to ensure everyone's best interest. Cold and scared, I sat there shivering. I concluded that in this situation if I had listened to my mom, I believe I could have prevented this trouble. I saw my life at fourteen years old flash before me on November 19, 2016. This experience will live in my memory forever.

In my life, I have been very fortunate. Intense struggle, emotional pain, and hardships never have seemed to come my way, as they do prematurely to some children. I have always taken this for granted, so I never thought about my life as being easy.

Eighteen years ago, when I was the age of two, my parents made the choice of crossing the border into the United States to better our lives. They made the sacrifice, knowing the risks we were facing. We crossed over into a new dimension, a tornadic whirl of culture and language, where everything was foreign to us. The soil under us was no longer the same. The plants were no longer the same. Even the air, was no longer the same. The red shoes on my feet were the only thing reminding me of the past, but I could not click them together, wish three times and be home. My future changed instantly as we crossed the border into the United States. I had to find my yellow brick road. My transition into the United States, at a young age, has had a great influence on my leadership style and the way I handle conflicts.