Overcoming Obstacles Or Challenges Over The Course Of My Life

The past few years I have had many unique opportunities and made many different decisions on the direction my life is taking. I have had multiple goals and challenges and where I am today has been formed with factors I did not always anticipate. For the last few years, I have worked in management, but before that I worked a variety of jobs. The different jobs I have worked have provided insight as to where I am now and how I would like to spend the remainder of my life.

That day when I returned home from school, my mom’s boyfriend called me asking to speak to my grandmother. Typically, Gus would call my grandmother himself if he wanted to speak with her, which was rare. I found out about my mom going to the hospital from my grandmother after that phone call. The doctor told my family that a stroke afflicted her in the middle of the day. My mom confused the date with her birthday, had trouble getting words out and remembering our family member’s names. The nurse had to take her for walks periodically and exercise her legs and arms because they were weak. Seeing my mother in this condition made me appreciate my mother and everything she does for me tremendously. However, I was terrified for my mother’s health.

Everyone faces barriers in their everyday lives, and I am no exception. My personal challenges have always happened to pertain to fitness and P.E. classes. I have tried to be athletic, when I was younger I was on a soccer team, a basketball team, and participated in Winterguard in eighth grade, all along with throughout the years desperately trying to make myself stick with a workout schedule. There are a few things in particular that have kept me from being physically active, despite my efforts, until recently in my life; I’m very busy and bad at time management, I don’t do well continuing things, and I lack athletic talent.

An ambulance came and carried out my mom. I didn’t know what was going on, so many questions running through my mind, what was wrong with her, was she going to be ok. I was scared, more scared then I had ever been. My sister Sheridan who was 8 asked me “what’s happening?” through tears. On that day a little piece of me began to change because if I let her see my fear that would not help anyone, and so even though I didn’t know what was happening I responded “everything is going to be ok” even though I did not trust my own words.

One important thing in my life is when I tore my ACL the first time in eighth grade basketball. It was November 15, 2015, when I first tore my ACL. I was at basketball practice and we were doing a rebounding drill. I jumped up to rebound the ball, because I can hardly jump I landed before most of the other players and Charlie, one of my teammates, came down on my knee. I heard my knee pop. My knee caved in and I fell, feeling excruciating pain as I fell to the ground I just saw the ground moving closer and closer. As I fell to the ground I felt my body hit the hard gym floor. All that went through my head was ”That hurt really bad!!!!” I was really sweaty, I could smell the sweat from the bodies, and I was tired from previous things we had done in practice but I just sat there screaming and balling. I started screaming and balling because my knee hurt so badly. I could taste the saliva from my mouth while I was lying there balling. One of the other players went into the locker room and grabbed my phone, I called my dad but he couldn’t make out anything I was saying because I was still crying. My coach, Ms. Bolton, carried me to the bench while my dad was on his way. My dad carried me out to the truck then inside to the couch when we got home. Brock, my brother, went and picked up some crutches for me. I ended up going to the doctor about a week later and then on January 4, 2016, I had my first surgery. Coming out of surgery and waking up in recovery was the worst pain I’ve EVER felt. I came out of recovery and was screaming in pain because they didn’t keep track of when I had last had morphine so I wasn’t on track and I felt my whole leg right after surgery. Tearing my ACL was important because it made me who I am today and made me stronger by

I was 33 years old on November 9th, 2000. My family was made of myself, my husband, Doug, my daughter, Haley, and our dog, Josie. Haley was only 2 years and 9 months old at the time of the birth of her new baby brother, but I wasn’t quite sure how she would handle not having all of the attention. I could tell something was off from the moment I woke up that day. To start, Haley wouldn’t stop crying from the moment she woke up. As for me, I was feeling sick, and was having a few contractions here and there. I was packing my things for the hospital because I was scheduled to have a C-section November 10th. Afternoon came and my condition was getting worse and worse, things got so bad that Doug and I decided we should go to the hospital. I was mortified because I just needed the baby to wait a couple more hours. I could not have this baby come out of the birth canal, my

Obstacles, like being an undocumented first-generation student, have shaped my identity in numerous ways. My story is an exercise in resilience, and I believe it to be powerful. However, my story can also cast a shadow over the more enjoyable, albeit mundane, aspects of my life. My love for food is a little-known part of my life which has brought me joy and many learning opportunities. In middle school, I wanted to be like one of the famous French chefs who defined modern cuisine.

My Systemic Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis; that’s what set my mind to being a Medical Lab Technician. As an optimistic freshman, I had a mindset that my 4 years of high school would go smoothly with flying colors; I was taking my first college class, AP World History. However, mid-year that mindset changed. I had been having major knee pain for 2 weeks with high fever, it was agony. My parents immediately took me to the hospital because my primary physician thought I had Kawasaki. As we were waiting in the emergency room, I could feel my parent’s consternation. I’m the first born with one younger sister. I can’t picture how distraught my parents would be if their first child passed away at such a young age with so much academic potential. Along with that, it had been less than a year that my grandmother passed away so my mom was truly

Booker T. Washington once wrote “Successes isn’t measured by the position you reach in life. It’s measured by the obstacles you overcome” An obstacle I had to face and overcome would be the time I injured my ankle. How did I overcome this obstacle you may ask? I overcame this obstacle by being positive and having a good attitude, almost every step of the way.

March 8th of 2013 is a date that will forever be engraved in my history. That sunny Friday would soon turn into a treacherous storm that would change my life forever. It began when my mother woke up. She was ready to take me to school as usual, but today she was feeling different. As we got inside the car, she had a hard time walking due to a painful sting she had in her lower abdomen. The car ride turned into a horror show as she began screaming from the pain she was experiencing, as if she were ready go into labor. Me, not knowing what to do, asked her if I should call 911. She refused. I was feeling anguished since was driving with the pain, which could have resulted in a car crash. As I got to school, I saw her ride off with a painful look

Hello everyone from the Jeanne E. Shader Endowed Scholarship foundation I just wanted to say thank you so much for investing in my education this means so much me because I am putting myself through school and it is a lot harder than I imagined and I never thought that I would have too. During my senior year of high school my dad left and took a lot of furniture from the house and all the money in the shared bank account that he and my mother shared. A few months after all this happened my mom started to get sick every night to the point I couldn’t sleep because I was so worried about her one night it was storming really bad and my mom walked in my room and asked me to take her to the hospital I was terrified because my mom avoids the doctors usually so I knew something had to be wrong it was also a day after

February twenty-third 2010 was just a regular ordinary day. I was on my way to class on this cold February afternoon, when my phone rung. It was my cousin on the other end telling me to call my mom. I could not figure out what was wrong, so I quickly said okay and I hung up and called my mom. When my mom answered the phone I told her the message but I said I do not know what is wrong. My mom was at work and could not call right away, so I took the effort to call my cousin back to see what was going on. She told me that our uncle was in the hospital and that it did not look good. Starting to tear up I pull over in a fast food restaurant parking lot to listen to more to what my cousin had to say. She then tells me to tell my mom to get to

It was May 17th, 2011, it was a normal school day when my brother and I were told that my mom called to say that she was picking us up early. I was anxious, wondering why we were going home early and breaking our usual routine. When my mom came to get us, the first thing that I noticed was that she didn’t greet us with her usual smile. I was 9 years old, very observant, but not able to sense what was to come. We got into the car, when I asked my mom where we were going hoping

Throughout my life, I have faced many challenges and obstacles that stood in my way. No matter the magnitude or even if there seemed to be no way possible, I always try and find a way. Every challenge that I have faced always required my maximum effort and was followed by success or failure, but this one is different. This is a challenge that I would have never in my life saw coming, this was a challenge where there was no succeeding or failing, but overall it made me a completely different person.

In life, we all go through challenges and it’s either we face them or walk away from it. Growing up, people will always have different ways of handling things that happens in their life. We can’t know what could happen and how we handle it because life is unexpected. As I see it is that if you tend to keep making the same mistakes, you’ll never get passed your past and if you learn from all of your mistakes, you can move forward with your life. Everyone has faced their challenges in their own way and not everything in life will be easy because I can tell you right now that no one’s life is perfect. Everyone has their flaws, but they're perfect in their own way possible.