My Personal Experience : My Experience In My Life

We are interested in learning more about you and the context in which you have grown up, formed your aspirations, and accomplished your academic successes. Please describe the factors and challenges that have most shaped your personal life and aspirations. How have these factors helped you to grow? (800)

Over the span of my lifetime, I have had many life changing experiences. From good to bad every aspect has shaped me and made me the person I am today. The biggest challenge and experience I have had is tearing my MCL multiple times. I never realized how much of a challenge it would be going through surgery, rehab, and the overall complications of a recurring injury. Tearing my MCL made me learn how to overcome obstacles and helped me work harder than I ever had to bounce back from the injury.

I look up to see a smiling baby with blue eyes, so sweet and innocent. Who knew life would throw these obstacles at us. Only a few days old and her future began to become unclear, already having to go through life changing surgeries. Everybody has a personal experience, some happy while others are not as joyful. Sometimes all you can do is hope that there is a chance things can go your way. But the hardest part is staying strong for those you love.

EVErY FAmILY hAS ThEIr STorY, ALL with aspects that brings them together or drive them apart. I come from a Mexican family, where family is the only thing we know. We share each other’s pain and misery and we rejoice for our miracles. We learn and grow through each other.

The searing, stabbing feeling, vibrating through your skull that renders you completely to where you cannot move, talk, or even eat is what hit me on August 11, 2013. The day and night before my 15th birthday was spent in the ER with a crippling migraine. The feeling of being treated like there was nothing wrong with you, and you were just faking it must be the worst feeling I have ever felt in my life. Chronic migraines affect people differently and can cause so many different problems. This is when it all started, when it got better, and when it began to go downhill all over again.

One wonders where to start? It happened so long ago the memories are all forgotten but a couple tiny, minute fragments; Shattered pieces, I can only see small picture like memories of. The one I remember most is a story of teaching, of enlightenment. When I learned a lesson that I will keep for a lifetime. To treasure life and all things given for you do not know when they can be taken from you.

Life is full of discomfort. Each individual adapts to these challenges differently, growing and evolving into beautifully unique and complex human beings all across the world. How we deal with this discomfort, with the fears and challenged presented in life, shapes who we will be. When I was born, I suffered from both a heart murmur and talipes equinovarus, or clubfoot, a birth defect that turned my feet in on themselves. The early years of my life were spent in and out of surgeries, a time I know was taxing for both my parents, but for me my memories are full of idyllic rainy days in coffee shops as I grew up on Haight street in San Francisco. By the time my sister was born, three years after me, I could do (in my opinion) just about anything a normal kid could, and when we moved to Marin a year later I was proud of everything that made me who I was - I loved to draw, to collect stones and feathers, to garden and save worms and play with our dog. It wasn’t that life had been difficult and was getting better - for me, it had always been good. For me, I was better and stronger and more unique for what I had been through.

When I met Josh around three years ago as his teacher assistant, he was shy, quiet and kept to himself. Yet as the semester went on he became more comfortable around me and his peers and engaged in conversation with myself and other classmates. I never imagined I would meet up with him again to do an assignment for our summer English 101 class. When I sat down with him in the Douglas library, the first thing I noticed was his prominent green eyes contrasting his darker hair followed by his welcoming smile. We chatted about what our lives had been like since the last time we saw each other and he surprised me by mentioning that he graduated from Plattsburgh State University only a week ago with a Bachelor’s of Science in Fitness and Wellness Leadership. Over the two years that he was there, he would travel forty-five minutes one way to get to class from his small town of Lyon Mountain.

I live in a small house in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I was starting middle school in a few months. I didn’t want to leave all my friends I had in Elementary school but my parents said I would make new friends at my new school. The summer went by so fast it was already the first day of school. I was so scared but before I had enough time to get back into the car my mom had already drove off and I knew I had to get through the day so I could go back home and play with my friends I had already knew. Throughout the day teachers helped me find where I need to go and I realized I had one girl with the same classes I had which made it easier for me and her. Sixth grade was over and I had made so many friends but I only had a best friend I made that year. In seventh grade, I had the same classes again with my best friend. I never thought I would make more friends. I trusted this girl with everything but things started to change throughout the school year. My best friend was not my best friend anymore by the time we were going on Christmas Break. Noting made sense on why she just stopped talking to me. I would come home and cry and talk to my mom about everything, “just let her be and you guys will be friends again” my mom said so I just left it and maybe my mom was right so I just let it go until Christmas Break was over and we had to go back to school.

Quickly following when I woke up, a strange sensation filled my stomach and I knew whatever it was I wouldn’t have been able to predict that I was about to experience a moment I’d remember my whole high school career. I could hear my own footsteps as they plonked down my driveway, inching my way closer and closer to my mailbox until my chin stood just above the rusty lever. As I cranked the lid open a white envelope protruding it’s way out from the pile of bills had caught my eye. The envelope made its way to my hand, a bit of pink paper emerging itself into the world as I ripped the seal. Words had arose onto the paper, transferred into my mind. I couldn’t believe my eyes, me a Freshmen would in a few terse hours be at a Sophomore’s house, and not only that, I would be there for a party. Knowing that Freshmen aren’t usually given this contingency, that’s how I know my impression matters now more than ever.

Imagine being in a family that always had so much going on, so many people running around going places, doing things, coming over, basically just always busy. Being the youngest it was never easy, always feeling like no one had time for me, not understand that I am not the only kid that has to be taken care of.

I always wonder how it feels to be heard and what the reactions of others will be. I never had that feeling but I constantly question myself if it’s worth the try. My fear for society has always been a thing, I don’t know why. It may not be a big deal to others and easy for others to speak up but to me it’s not. It’s not easy to be speak nor share, people who know me may wonder why but not even I would understand why. Growing up I have always been quiet but little does everyone know how I really wish I could be heard.

My time working at a children’s psychiatric hospital helped me realize my strength and taught me more compassion than the rest of my life combined. Many times I had questioned if I was cut out for this work and if I was doing any good trying to help these children. I had to learn to walk on the fine line between growing thick skin and showing love and acceptance to kids who are seemingly unlovable. My experiences have continued to shape who I am had help give me perspective for when I find myself in difficult situations.

I forgot to make Johnny and Cora, my younger siblings, their lunches again today. It’s been very hard on me, I have so much more responsibility than I have ever had before. With my older sister, Betsy, sick in bed with the Spanish Flu, my mama working in a factory, and my father away fighting in the Great War, I have to do everything I can for my family. I cook, clean, get the kids ready, help with homework, care for Betsy, and I don’t mind it all that much. The only thing I miss most about my old life is getting to go to school and have opportunities to learn. All I can do now is sit at home and read in the little free time I have.

Everybody has a diverse environment in which they grew up in, and it is unique to the individual, never to be replicated. I have experienced this sense of variance first hand. Growing up with a father birthed in Syria and a mother from the coast of Long Beach, California, my childhood was, to say the least, interesting. However, everything that happened from my birth until now, all made me who I am today, someone I am very proud to have become after these seventeen years.