My Experience In My Life

I always have thought to myself how my mother can live up and always stay positive with her rough childhood and adulthood. One day I decided to ask her about her childhood and adolescence years. I then asked her, “Can you tell me about your background years?” She started off by saying “I was raised in a not so amazing neighborhood in New York, which was Queens.” I wanted to know more and get into her life journey even more, so we talked the whole night about her life journey.

I went on a trip this summer to Maui, Haiti with my family for a mission trip. My mom has been going for over five years now and she loves the experiences each time we go as much as I do. This summer was my first time traveling to Haiti and I already fell in love with the place and people there. When I first landed in the Haitian airport, I already could see such a dramatic change they have there and how different an airport looks in America. My family and I went outside after our bags were checked and met up with my moms best friend, Arnold. When I met him I was so happy to finally see him and talk to him since my mom knew him for so long. From there I knew my next three weeks here will be the best and most amazing experiences I will ever have.

After sitting down on the porch with coffee in hand, waves of nostalgia washed over me. Staring into my coffee, flashbacks ran through my mind. The old, yellow school bus rocked back and forth over the worn dirt path on its way to the orphanage that would be my home for the following week. The scolding South American sun beated down on the school bus as I began to question why I chose to spend my service requirement here. I tried to imagine the following week which would be wifi less, family-less, and air conditioning less. After a two hour bus ride, my team of 20 people and I arrived at Orphanage Emmanuel. Orientation and assignments filled the following hours until we all climbed onto our plastic mattresses and attempted to get some sleep.

I felt lost. I had no hope, motivation, or joy. After hitting a brick wall in my path towards graduating, I felt totally incapacitated. Suddenly, through the struggle and pain shone a tiny, fluffy, and cuddly beacon of light. Her name would eventually be Boogies. She brought a purpose back into my life. Her love filled a void in my heart that I could not have previously defined. My relationship with my cat has helped me regain ambition and a true excitement for life.

It was my junior year on a regular Thursday afternoon in my social studies class. Or I thought it was a regular day. I had a boyfriend at the time and I was in love. Or so I thought. He would always walk me to my classes and be there when I needed him to be. So this day, I woke up to the sun shining through my window and the birds singing a song. It was going to be a good day. I got dressed and went to the bus stop, because I wasn’t driving at the time, and waited for the bus and got on. I arrived at school about five minutes after I got on the bus because I did not live that far away from my High School.

“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’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

During my first semester as an undergraduate college student, Santiago, my best friend and boyfriend, passed away. The flight from Denton to Dallas was not quick enough. Just as he took his last breath on the emergency room, the plane landed. At that moment, I had felt as if half of myself had died along with him. Life quickly forced me to encounter a difficult trial in my life; the death of a loved one is one that few learn to overcome. Death is a reality, hardly any truly know how to manage or if it is even manageable. Four years ago, at that exact moment, I had lost hope on dreaming. I refused to continue to dream since I felt it had led to nothing the first time. My dreams of one day spending the rest of my life with Santi had died along with him. At that moment I couldn’t see any dream ever coming true. However, just as life can throw us curve balls, it can also teach us how to aim for them and send them flying away.

I was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala. I like to think that I’ve been blessed to experience so many different cultures, lifestyle, and diversity in Guatemala City amongst its people spending the first 6 years of my life and then moving to Belize. The change from only speaking and hearing Spanish every day to learning English after moving to Belize was a struggle. A struggle that I am so thankful I went through now because that made my transition much easier as I got to further my education to where I am now; a proud graduate and Alumni from the University of North Florida.

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.

When I was seven years of age my family and I lived in Los Angeles, California, approximately thirty-five miles from the city of Reseda, the epicenter of the now infamous 1994 Northridge earthquake. Many memories from my childhood are a blur, but the morning of January seventeenth is crystal clear. I recall being awakened roughly at 4:30 in the morning when my bed began trembling uncontrollably beneath me. An unexplainable fear took over me, which kept me from jumping out of my bed and running out of my room, so I laid on my bed, paralyzed, waiting for my father to save me. However, before my father was able to find his way to my room, the shaking stopped.

Everything comes with time, from age to understanding. I have come to realize many things over the years, but some have been much more significant than others. We have read quite a few pieces as of late, and I feel learning from others is essential in our everyday lives.

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.

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.

At this point in my life , if i review my previous experiences i would say that i am fairly pleased. I've been able to gain numerous life and academic skills through hard work and determination. Though many of my experiences haven't been pleasant ,in a way it has helped me grow and build my character as a person.