My Life As A Child

Being careless about my education, I was not concerned about how my grades would affect me in the future. I was more concerned about going against what my parents were telling me just to make them furious. I always saw myself as an average student so I really did not mind missing school and paying much attention to it. At the time, it did not seem like a big deal to me but realizing what I had done with my education was a mistake. Those bad habits I picked up throughout the years ended up making the rest of my high school career difficult. I made things that were useless seem important. I put those first when in reality they were not that important and I could have simply pushed it away. This is where I was starting to realize that I needed a wakeup call. I needed to set priorities for myself that was going to put my education back on track.

In life we may go through hardships that take us down a path that benefits us in the future and make us stronger individuals. These hardships can influence a person’s life by making us face obstacles we don’t want to face and

In order to get the help I needed, my mom had to pick me up two hours early from school every day and bring me to Anderson Elementary, where the speech therapist was located. Being forced to leave school early didn't help my social issues. The friends I had turned on me, and I became the weird girl. I no longer had people to eat lunch with, and invitations to birthday parties stopped arriving in the mail. I was mocked on a daily basis by people I had previously considered to be friends. Everyone had their own conspiracy theories about me; it hurt. Along with my new-found social struggles, my grades began to drop and I knew I had to make a

trying to change or overcome obstacles can be damaging. Life is full of struggles, but it

I decided that I was going to go to Craven Community College and work on finishing the classes I needed to get my high school diploma. Unfortunately, that did not happen either. When I was seventeen, my mother unexpectedly passed away. My mother was my best friend and it was a huge loss to me and the rest of my family. I went through a period of grieving which lasted for almost a year. The subject of school was brought up again and I decided to get my GED from Craven. The fall after I received my GED, I started my first semester. I had to deal with anxiety and this feeling I had that I was a failure. I had to remind myself that I suffered in school because of my mental illness, not because I was stupid. I have recently started my third semester at Craven and I have a 4.0 GPA. I still have to deal with anxiety, mood swings, and stepping up as a mother figure to my little sister, but I have never let any of this bring me down. I have not given up and I never will. I use my past experiences as a way of reminding myself have far I have come, and that I am strong enough to take on anything I want to do in the future. That is why I feel like I would be a good candidate for

My sophomore year at Central High School did not start out the best. I was recovering from an awful grade point average, awful for me at least, I was sitting the bench in a sport that I had lost interest in, and overall I just did not enjoy school anymore. I personally did not see the point in coming to school at all. It took some time, but I finally started to get my grades up, my season had ended for football, and I knew I was not going back. After everything was starting to go my way I started thinking, “What am I going to do next?”

Since my younger years I have been compelled to differentiate between enduring and overcoming. From my parent’s divorce, our financial instability and my multiple social dislocations, I had to learn to adapt to ever-changing environments and circumstances. Before my grandfather died he shared with me one of his favorite quotes and one that I will never forget, which says that, “the key to life is found by

From the time I was born until the age of twelve, my family struggled with the basic necessities of life. My father worked endless hours in a factory, and yet somehow came home with a smile on his face. As a young kid, I never knew we were struggling. The thought had never occurred to me. As I got older I started to realize that my single father was working his life away to care and provide for his two little girls. He completely put aside his well-being because as long as his girls were cared for, nothing else mattered. Life was never easy, but as a young adult today, I have come to accept that my background has been a prerequisite for greatness, for it is our backgrounds that define who we are. The way we are raised, the way we are taught to believe, and the way we are taught to act, make us who we are today.

I was out of place, a quiet girl whose clothing was obviously not fashionable, lucky if she had a bag lunch, and no reason to be confident. I was picked on relentlessly by others who recognized an easy target. My chaotic home life was never conducive to good grades, or school for that matter. No one I knew was a role model and no one volunteered to step up to be one. With no social life and a toxic home life, my grades plummeted before they had a chance to climb.

Throughout our lifetime we go through a variety of challenging changes that may affect our future, Joseph O'Connor, a Lee high school graduate, and I are just a few of many examples. In his article, “A View from Mount Ritter”, O’Connor shares a horrific life changing experience on a two-week expedition in northeastern California. O'Connor a regular stubborn teenager, gets trapped in a frightening storm on the second week with another expeditioner. As soon as the storm starts to calm they starts to search for the driest place to set camp, realizing it was the worst night of his life O’Conner decides to turn his life around by turning his poor academic grades around and deciding to go to college. O'Connor's purpose is to inform and educate his readers to realize how precious life is and how it should not be taken for granted. He supports his purpose with a personal experience, concluding with “No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and how dear to his heart and eye morning can be”. Based on O'Connor's experience and my own, the quotation reveals a truth, a truth that people must endure a struggle in order to appreciate one's life.

Two months into freshman year in public high school and I was miserable. I was not thriving academically and was required to take remedial classes, even though I knew I was smart enough to take regular classes. I knew that my current environment would not allow me to succeed, so I needed to either change my surroundings or accept failure.

I dropped out of high school in February of 2005. I was newly 17, and although I had never been an exceptional student, I had never planned on dropping out either. At the time, I had been placed in out-patient hospitalization. It was decided by my doctors, and parents, that this was the best course of action. They believed the stress of finishing school would interfere with my recovery. In truth, school had nothing to do with my illness. I was living with my parents in a violent and unhappy home. Being an empathetic person, I took everything around me in, and was not able to cope with my situation. I had a severe eating disorder, and was hospitalized after my second suicide attempt. After finishing my treatment I started attending G.E.D. prep courses and began working for at the South Salem Applebee’s as a hostess.

Some reasons why childhood has changed during the past generation are the crimes surged from the 60’s through the early ‘90s, stories of abducted children appeared constantly in the news and this created fear in many parents. The society changed, people seem to have more malicious and that is why parents started to be more cautious.

It was eighth grade and I was the new girl at a school where I was pretty much the only Hispanic there. While everyone else was Caucasian and knew each other. I changed schools because my mother hated the middle school I was going to and wanted me to have the best school education. However, I didn’t want. I didn’t want to leave my friends. I thought that I was learning everything I needed to be ready for high school. I was stubborn about not needing to change schools, until my grades began to drop, especially my English grade.

To this day, I can still remember standing at the end of my driveway watching my mother arrive home from the bus stop. This day was different; she was not coming home empty handed. In fact, she had stopped at a yard sale on the way home and bought a prize for me, a doll named Suzy. This memory, from the age of two, embraces the story of my mother and my entire childhood. In Indianapolis, Indiana in September 1980, I was born to a single mother. Throughout her life, she worked for the phone company in downtown Indianapolis. Even though she raised us through hardships and despair, she always took the time to love my brother and me outwardly. Until second grade, I have no recollection of my father visiting more than three occasions. At last, in fourth grade we began to spend weekends at his house and with his family. Sadly, when I was eleven we learned that my father had cancer. One week before Christmas, after a school music program, I read his obituary in the paper and told my mother he had passed away. From that moment, our family forever changed, specifically my relationship with my mother.