My Experience In My Life

Education means something different for everyone. According to Mike Rose, “a good education helps us make sense of the world and find our way in it” (33). The truth to this is that education affects us in every aspect of our lives. Rose emphasizes the value in the experience of education beyond the value of education for the purpose of custom or intelligence; he explores the purpose of going to school in terms of how he defines himself and his personal growth in the stages of his academic career. In Rose’s exploration of the purpose of school, he also reflects on his personal experiences and how those experiences gave him tools that are applicable to his daily life. Mike Rose’s Why School?: Reclaiming Education for All of Us persuades his audience of the importance of education beyond the classroom, emphasizing how those experiences become crucial to one’s personal growth and potential.

While reading Too Cool for School by Ellis Cose I have became aware of various aspects of my ‘schooling’ experience. I realized that I may not have had the best schooling experience, but I never pushed up against the system to get any better. Throughout my life I have attended over 10 schools some very high end others bottom of the barrel. Like Cose, I always knew my intellectual abilities, but I was always so dissatisfied with my situation I didn't make the best of it. Instead of soaking up as much knowledge as possible and making a lesson out of my situation I became complacent. I started to slack off and allow myself to become stagnant to what I knew my abilities were. I allowed myself to be a product of my environment when I should I have

The first year, the time to prove myself had arrived. Classes, rooms, teachers, and some students were unfamiliar. Eventually, minutes melted into hours, hours to days, and days to weeks. It didn’t take long before my schedule was routine, something of second nature. Humor and happiness were found in the form of my advisory family, where school was transformed into something more than going through the same motions of day to day activity. By the closing point of sixth grade, I was having a hard time letting go of what I’d adapted to. “What’s wrong?” my dad asked when I was getting into the car after being picked up early on the last day. I explained how distressed I was that my first year of middle school exceeded my expectations, and that it had to come to an end. Although his outlook viewed my reason for sorrow as trivial, I didn’t.

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.

From my earliest memory, my life in the Philippians was surrounded with joy. I was born

It was the 2000s. I had been without a job for at least a couple of weeks and was finding it extremely hard to carry out my life in my village in Veracruz, Mexico. I used to own a farm but when the temperature began to rise and the soil was less fertile, I had to put an end to it because I was unable to plant or harvest any crops. In the past, this had been my main source of income but as the time went by, I could not sustain this lifestyle anymore. Furthermore, I couldn’t supply my family of 4 with the items they needed to be alive. After having a long talk with my wife, Emilia, I decided to begin to consider many different options. We searched all of the village and even in nearby towns trying to find a place that would hire me. We didn’t find anything but did see a flyer on a pole that was interesting. It said, “Go to America. You’ll get hired for sure.” Me and my wife were overjoyed when we saw this. We immediately began to plan our move up North.

“It’s Monday night, still haven’t come up with anything yet?” my daughter asks me as she comes into my bedroom. She finds me at my desk staring at my computer in a daze yet again. She knows I have been here for quite a while again today. The shreds of loose leaf paper on the floor that the dog has had a field day with are a dead giveaway. “Drink enough coke, mama?” she says laughing under her breath as she walks out of the room. I look over to see the three diet Dr. Pepper cans lined up in a row on my desk next to a plate that still has bits of the homemade fudge cake on it. “It’s true.” I think to myself. “Here it is last minute!”

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.

On Saturday, June 24, 6:00am me and my family were getting ready to go to Omaha .To experience going somewhere far away from home.But that wasn't the only reason why we were going we were .Also going because we wanted to see the zoo some people were talking about it and how wonderful and amazing it was to go there.Everyone was exciting me, my sisters and my mom too because it was are first time that we were going to stay at a hotel.

For most of my life I had not put much effort into my looks or health. I prided myself with my intelligence but was unhappy with how my body looked. I thought it was silly to be so concerned with my mental strength but not my physical. Until my sophomore year I was overweight and did not have much of a social life.

During the Summer of ***** I made my way to training camp. The sweltering Summer air was unforgiving. It felt like a cloud of heat was just entrapping me wherever I went. I had to travel for what seemed like days to reach the training camp. The buses were infrequent and covered in filth. The insides of those buses were almost twenty degrees warmer than the outside. I literally fought people to be next to the windows because I was sure that if the bullets weren’t going to kill me, the heat exhaustion would. After what seems like years in that awful bus (Mule) I reached the training camp.

My eyes were filled with tears and my hands sweaty. I was nervous about how mommy would look after coming home from the hospital. I was 10, it was daytime outside, but inside and all around me it was nighttime, darkness was coming and it filled me with terror. My mother worked as a nurse in the local hospital, I could smell her uniform even today.

Early morning glaze slips through the drapes, reflecting off the crystal collection that's rooted on my windowsill. The specular reflection of light urges me to open my eyes, drawn to the washed out rainbows projecting onto the pristine white walls. I sit up. With feet lightly resting on the carpeted floor I begin to feel energy rolling through my veins, waking up my toes, my calves, into my stomach, up through my chest, reaching the span of my arms and deep into my mind. Taking in the first breath of day through a long winded stretch, I begin making my way towards the other side of the room. I stare blankly into what seems like the ocean, deep and belonging to more than one place. The mirror is telling me that my eyes are like bark, dark, earthy and brown. My hair curls like the spiraling spine of the native koru and my winter woolies melt into the lovable curves that are my body. Aging gracefully, some would say, but that isn’t what I would say. I would say I am a misplaced key, one that is desperately desirable yet so easily discarded.

As time passed, it seemed to fly faster and faster. Soon, it was the summer between my sophomore and junior years and I had an abundance of plans for how to spend my summer. One event stood out compared to all of the others. It would greatly influence my life and shape my thoughts to the way they are today. Reminiscing about the events of my past, my journey to the glamorous mountains of Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico to hike for a week is indisputably the greatest memory of my life so far.

Growing up without parents at a young age was difficult. I didn’t understand why things happened the way they did and why no one was ever there to answer the many questions I had. Seeing the kids at school drawing their perfect house and family was almost too much to bear sometimes. All the school events, holidays, birthdays and activities always made me feel like I wasn’t whole. At a young age, I knew that I only had myself and with no parental support, it felt like the chances of succeeding were diminished. Without the love and support from a family, it's hard to stay on the right track and have the motivation to do better. I remember envying my peers because I so badly desired what they had. I had to learn how to overcome the jealousy while learning how to be independent. Being on my own taught me to appreciate what I had and how to make light of any situation that life may throw.