My Experience In My Life

It was my first year in Smithsburg High School, and I was surrounded by my friends I knew in middle school. Everything was going great with football games, the pep rally, and my friends. Then, Christmas came and I got a present that I wish was never under the tree--“We’re moving to Columbia, Maryland at the end of January” (for my mom's new job). I am not going to lie, I cried. I did not want to move from my comfort zone of rural Smithsburg to the urban-city of Columbia. However, the time came when I had to say goodbye to my friends and start a new life. After we moved into our new apartment, I started the rest of my freshman year at Long Reach High School.

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.

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.

Chicago, Illinois is where a baby boy was born in 2001 at a mischievous and uncomfortable place. His parents named Mayra and Natividad arrived as undocumented people. When the young baby boy was born, his parents said this to each other, “This young man right here will become one of the greatest person God has sent us. He will help us to achieve many wonders and gifts for us.” That inspiration gave life to the little one and was a blessing to him to live life. Once he grew enough to enter Kindergarten, this triggered a conflict between reading and talking. It was a struggle during the times that his parents put him in reading tutorials and speech. After many practices, he then later began talking English and reading it fluently. What he wanted, was a better life for his parents; a life that he could see his parents smile everyday. A life where there isn’t any conflict between them; a life with at least some peace. That short kid was me; now I’m have enough experience to express my feelings to everybody, but to begin with, when I began growing in age I started to see life as a cruel world especially when it came towards my parents lives and experiences.

I was sitting in the plane going to where my mother lived when she was a kid, finally landing at the only airport in my entire state and the 45 min drive to my “home” I felt a new emotion I had never felt or known about at the time, anxious. First an outcast as an American with Indian heritage, but now as another outcast but this time as an Indian with American heritage. I recall on my thoughts that I had sprinting throughout my mind as the heat kept pounding against my skin. Not sure whether to be nervous, Thrilled, or homesick. It wasn’t the night my parents decided it was best for my brother and I to go to India and live there for 2 years it was that night, my first night sleeping without the same bed, power rangers bed set with yu-gi-yoh and Pokémon pillows that I had realized my life was never going to be the same.

I’ve grown up in Louisiana all my life; born and raised in the River Parishes where the seafood and industrialized oil was abundant. I never remembered how I came accustomed to the southern lifestyle or how I managed to learn how to fish or skin a rabbit, for it just came naturally. I assume it was because I had lived here all my life that growing up by the culture, in turn, enhanced my southern styled skills. The puzzle pieced itself together, when my friend Adriana came to visit from Minnesota. We were pen pals at the time, but coincidentally, she had close relatives in St. John the Baptist Parish. One summer evening on her visit, we had a seafood boil which consisted of crabs, shrimp, crawfish, corn, sausage, and turkey neck. Now me being the lil’ ole’ Louisiana girl, I happily peeled my seafood with ease and dug in. However, I had noticed that Adriana did not touch her seafood. Her Auntie Kim had peeled all of her seafood for her. I was curious as to why Adriana did not know how to peel seafood; It was an easy task! Nothing to watch out for but the sharp claws and doubling checking for any shellings. Peeling seafood was like the ABCs for me, so why not for Adriana? I was 10 at the time, but now with age, it has come to me that not all Northerners who have yet to visit the south, do not know how to peel these weird crustaceans or to scrupulously eat clean a turkey neck to the bone! They couldn't fathom the thought of eating something that previously lived in the wild mud

Starting in my eleventh-grade year of high school, I never knew all the changes I would experience. I attended Chickasaw High School in Chickasaw, AL. It was a little school, which had about five hundred students in total. I did not live in Chickasaw like all the other kids. I lived about twenty minutes away in Mobile, AL with my dad and stepmom. I went to this school because my stepmom (LaRae) was a teacher there. Also, I was like most girls in high school, I had a high school sweetheart named Michael Matthews. I thought my eleventh-grade year of high school was going to be a great and memorable experience until I found out some horrible news.

Hope Rebecca Davis, a little formal don’t you think? You’d think that my parents thought I was going to be the hope of the world or something of that sort, but that is the farthest from the truth. I was named Hope just because my mom thought that Hope was a “pretty” name. As you know that was probably a bit disappointing for me, but my name represents a great deal to me. Hope means to have a feeling of expectation or desire for a certain thing to happen… then I considered the following, I can be the person in the world that makes these things happen. I can be the change in this unfluctuating society. I can be the person I want to be when I grow older, I just don’t know what I desire to do yet. But experiences in my life such as these are going to guide me to where I need to be.

One hour later and my life became changed forever. My loving and caring family I bonded with, would no longer be the same. The long walks with my mom in the evening would soon become a distant memory. Decorating for the holidays was just around the corner and I would have to hang up the stocking on the chimney without her. The sweet, rich, chocolate brownies she made every Friday night would leave my taste buds empty. Her hugs that made me feel loved when I was sad would now be a thought in my head, and our long talks about growing up and finding my way would be cut short.

This whole experience has taught me a few things about myself, my future, and my past actions. First and foremost this experience has scarred me in a way that I believe has had positive impact on my life. For example, the other day I heard a knock at my door. It happened to be a friend stopping by to give me something he borrowed from my roommate. But the knock struck me still. It caught me off guard and made my stomach jump because it sounded exactly like the knock I had received that dreadful night. I stood there reflecting for a moment before opening the door, thinking about my wrongs. Again that moment is now stuck with me as a constant reminder of my stupidity and recklessness. Whenever I see Gainesville police riding around campus I am reminded of being at the hood of the car with my fingerprints being taken. Frankly, this moment has been a giant wake up call. I have chosen to answer by realigning my priorities and goals to be consistent with my success. No one in life will come along to further yourself unless you take initiative and this experience has lead me to take initiative. Being constantly reminded of my mistake I am only make more determined, more headstrong, and more steadfast in my school endeavours and my future.

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.

As we live in this world I have felt like the situations we go through it is unfair. Yes everyone goes through hard time because no one has a perfect life or even a perfect family. At times I have experienced what losing someone or something that meant so much to me. I always wondered to myself about why these situations happen to me, which also led me to put myself in a depression stage. My father was diagnosed with liver cancer and infection in his stomach area in March 2015. As he was in and out of the hospital.

One hour later, and my life became changed forever. My loving and caring family I bonded with would no longer be the same. The long walks with my mom in the evening would soon become a distant memory. Decorating for the holidays was just around the corner and I would have to hang up the stocking on the chimney without her. The sweet, rich, chocolate brownies she made every Friday night would leave my taste buds empty. Her hugs that made me feel loved when I was sad would now be a thought in my head, and our long talks about growing up and finding my way would be cut short.

My life is a sailboat sailing through the sea. It is a sailboat because sometimes life can be an easy breeze and it feels like you have no worries and nothing else matters except the moment you are currently in. Although sometimes life can almost feel like you’re in the middle of a terrible storm in the ocean ; everything seems to be going wrong in every way. Once you finally get out of the storm, the sun starts peeking through the clouds; the waves become calm again and the cooling sea breeze hits your face ever so softly. Knowing that everything is going to be okay.