My Experience In My Life

Have you ever been in a conversation where you have no clue what to say next. Have you ever been in a situation where you see someone you don't know and wanna talk to them but dont have the courage to say anything?

Sixteen years old can be a very confusing age in any person’s life. We’re expected to act like adults but get treated like children, the age we begin to prepare ourselves for our last year of high school, the year we start to look into colleges we want to attend and what it is we want to do with our lives. But for me it was the age when my parents thought they would lead separate lives.

The story began about a year and some months ago. Early in the Fall 2016 semester, I met a girl named Ann through a friend of mine. My first impression of Ann was that she was very pretty, but she talked a lot. I mean a lot! After I met her, the three of us began to hangout a couple of times each week. Even though she talked a lot it was fun having her around because of the energy she brought to any situation. At first, I felt that being around her drained my energy, but I eventually got accustomed to it, and grew to feed off it.

I don’t know how to start my story.I might start it when I was a baby or as far as I can remember. Let’s go as far as I remember. It’s not going to be much but i’ll try my best to tell you.

I first became aware of myself as a unique human being about a month ago because of things occuring in my life. I had a lot of new things going on in my mind last year for the first time. I didn’t know why it was this was happening to me, I thought there was something wrong with me. This is how I became aware of me being different from everyone else. *Personal*

It was a hot summer day, and me and my two best friends were on a roadtrip together. It was boiling hot outside, but soon the warm sun was starting to set in the west and my friends had fallen asleep in the back of the car. We were on a dusty dirt road in a forest, where there were no signs or anything to indicate where we were. Therefore, we weren't sure where we were. The dirt road only lead one way so we decided to just stay on it and see where it lead us too. We traveled on the dusty dirt road for an hour and that's when my gaslight turned on. It was now very dark and we had ran out of food, and now gas. The car came to a stop.

I had only left the United States once before in my life. It was a small trip to London with my mother to visit a distant relative. It was a quick trip, maybe 3 or 4 days and I could hardly remember it because it was 12 years ago. I didn’t have much motivation to leave home again except for university. Until I got a call. On Wednesday, April 24th at exactly 3:37 pm I got a call from my aunt Kaasni. This was no ordinary phone call, as we normally had pre-organized phone calls every other Sunday evening and she hardly talked to me when I had school work. That was the deal with my parents after my father left – I could speak to my aunt who he lived with every other Sunday and on certain holidays. I picked up the phone and my father, drunk and hazy spoke. “Sasha my dear ba-ba-baby how are you,” he slurred “you know what, I think you should come spend some time with me, here in Calcutta, get a different taste of what life is like for your old man.” It took a moment for me to process what he had said – he wanted me to see him, after 15 years, he wanted me in his life again. Then I heard my auntie on the phone “Sasha? I am so sorry, your father drank a little too much. We are on holiday here and I hope he hasn’t disturbed you,” she said. “Oh no Auntie Kay, its fine,” I replied, still deep in thought. The line went silent for a moment as I heard her shush my intoxicated father while she held her palm to the phone. She picked up once again and continued apologizing until I

Maya Angelou once said, “What is the fear of living? It’s being preeminently of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility of yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.” Everyday I think about everything I went through while growing up and forming into the person I am today. Going through all the experiences I have gone through, I didn’t realize how much they would impact me today and serve as lessons. Today I am a freshman in college. I did not think I would make it this far. The precious gift of life is to enjoy every moment as if it is your last.

My life, or perhaps in the manner that I perceive it, has been overwhelmingly filled with enlightening and repressive circumstances that could have been averted, but all in all, makes up one's destiny. These events intricately tailored me into a young man that grew conscientious of the detrimental behavior of “acting before thinking” and into the realm of “thinking before acting". What I would soon come to understand was that through sheer patience, and trial-and-error it instilled within me new insights to learn from and that the most triumphant moments in my life began at the crossroads of unknowingness, a decision to stay in mediocrity, or the pursuit towards personal greatness- thus the decision had to be met.

Throughout a person’s life, there can be many things, such as friends and family, education, or sports, that help them develop skills to turn them into the person they are today. Without these different skills, it can possibly lead to a lower standard of living, which is not what we strive for. The thing that helped me develop my unique skill set that I can use through the rest of my life, which is also my cultural artifact, is a football. Football has taught many different things that I am able to use during the rest of my college experience, and after that during my professional career. The different skills football has taught me is the value of friendship, self-motivation, and time management skills.

I don't consider myself a Good Samaritan or even a role model but I do take 5 day out of my life in a whole year to help kids with many types of disabilities including my little sister. Every year I volunteer at Kamp Dovetail in June, we sleep in a tent every night outside in the blistering heat and unpredictable weather. Every day we get up at 7 am and start our day off with breakfast, which many different sponsor donate, we then proceed to group time where we talk about our fun filled activities for the day. Some of the activities include arts and crafts, fishing, boating, horseback riding, recreation, bouncy house, mini golfing, and the most popular of all swimming. For many kids this week is the only week that they can experience some of these activities because not all of the children have excellent home lives so we all strive to make this the best week that they'll always remember and want to return next year. Even though we try to do our best to control every situation to have the best possible outcome, we can't control the weather. I have been volunteering for five years and every year we would have to evacuate to the nearest school because of a huge thunderstorm that would flood the whole camp site. Normally we can watch the radar and pack up before the storm hits however, one year that wasn't the case.

Want to know what I did this summer that is different than yours? Well you’re going to hear a lot about it from me in this writing. Traveling in a long hot car ride down to Panama City, Florida is one heck of a ride let me tell you. The hot air on your face as you’re just trying to relax in the back seat of a crammed SUV. The air is so hot that it’s way to hard to fall asleep in the fifteen hour long car ride to your destination. So then you're forced to actually communicate with the people in the car with you, which than you figure out isn’t so bad after all. Laughing the whole way down and jamming out made our whole trip down so much better than it originally was going to be. And than when you finally pull into the driveway of your new

Imagine your story becoming the forerunner of someone else’s. Someone you have never met, yet because of one story, he or she found the strength and courage to become a person far greater than ever imagined. A story of unimaginable adventures, lessons, and hardships, this is the story I, Thu Dang, will create for myself and others.

The summer after freshman year, I went on a journey that completely changed my life forever and opened a whole new door to my life. My four weeks in Grenada, Nicaragua, put me in situations that not many freshmen get to experience at home. During this experience, I was able to do lots of community service, visit students at their school, play games with kids, and of course, study Spanish.

“I’m proud of you.” These are the words that keep me going. When I was left here, hint the sarcasm, I felt like I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t ready to grow up and face the world so quick when I still had so much to learn about myself. I was so enclosed with my family that the next couple days growing up wasn’t an option and I had to be careful. With all this Independence as an individual and not hide behind my family. By the time it came for the weekend I felt better about myself like I can do this and it gets easier. I had this new view on college because of the new friends that I met. When I’m around them I forget about missing home and my family. They are my second family who supports each other and don’t want to see them beating themselves up. We meet up and do thing on and off campus, study as a group and eat together. Without them I would just be in my dorm all the time. Being here by myself I have more freedom than I did at home. I wasn’t being watched over like a hawk 24/7.