Personal Essay : How I Changed The World

Life normally doesn’t go the way you plan when you’re young. When I was little, I figured that when I was at the age of graduation I would be totally prepared to go off my own. As I sit and think about the topic of how my life is going, several thoughts pour into my mind. First, I think of how lucky I am. The past two years could’ve changed my life because of bad health. Through weeks and months of hospitals stays and hours spent in the doctor’s office and in the emergency room, I’ve come out lucky and I have almost returned to good health. Second, I think of those friends who I thought would be there for my whole life that are no longer a part of my life. I also look to the people who I never thought would be there by my side and realize

I walked away feeling like I was a complete failure and that I didn’t deserve to go on. On the way home my mother tried to talk to me, but, I put on my headphones and cried silently. Once we were home my father asked how it went. The tears that were in my eyes and they became more evident as my shoulders and chest were shaking and trembling. The only sound in the room was the sound of me crying and wailing. I started crumbling and falling to the ground and my mother and father rushed to my side. They held me until the tears came to a stop and a little bit afterwards

And then, the day I had feared of most, finally arrived. We lost our father, the only figure I truly felt safe with. After months of mourning and painful transformations, our mother fell sick. In those terrible days, days during which I was locked in the basement most of the time, for my safety and even more: for the safety of my family, I was incapable of helping. To this, I regret even today.

I reached my hand out trying to try and grab it, when suddenly my heart felt like it had sunk to the pit of my stomach, I was falling. It felt endless as I fell through the ground. Almost like I was at the edge of a cliff, while I reached out I just fell off. It was strange, the feeling gave me chills so I closed my eyes shut just as I had landed. I slowly opened my eyes and saw a huge screen the size of a wall. I saw myself in my kitchen, hiding from when my parents and siblings were having dinner last night. Wherever I looked it was there. I tried to look away but the screen followed, even when I closed my eyes, the memory kept replaying. Over and over again my memories of my family seeming to ignore me, being better off without me I thought. However, I couldn’t hear a thing they were saying, it was just me watching my life from another perspective. I squeezed my eyes shut trying to make the image

I climbed out, and looked around. Most of the drawers, cupboards and doors were either open or smashed. My parents had vanished, they were nowhere to be seen. I walked to, what used to be, the front door. I looked outside and was horrified to see that half of the houses were in flames or had burnt down completely. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what to think. I don’t know why, but I started to run. I ran as fast as I could I wasn’t going to stop. I was going to the city limits, I was going to leave ‘The Main’. I jumped the fence, and was engulfed by trees and plants. I walked around, I didn’t know what to do; should I go back? Should I hand myself in? When I was deep in thought a hand covered my mouth and I fell to the

I could feel the tears forming in my eyes. It was getting hard to breathe. The only thing I wanted to do right then and there in that moment is leave that room. I tried speaking, words wouldn’t form. I turned and looked at my brother and sister who just set there, no emotion on their faces. How could they just set there? At this point I was furious and found myself running to my room. Once to my room, I immediately began asking God why. Why my parents? What did I do to deserve such a thing? My pillow soon became saturated in tears.

When I arrived home, nobody was there. The street was still as a statue. I was too scared to even think about what could’ve happened to my parents. I hid in the basement for four and a half hours while I prayed my family was still alive. Sitting there waiting seemed like it lasted an eternity. I was curious what was going on. I walked upstairs only to see the house completely ransacked. I heard nothing though I knew they had been here, but they didn’t find me. I had been able to survive the invasion but my family and the rest of my friends are gone and I am alone.

For every change within a society, personal changes with “self” must happen. These social changes are important to people while, people who don’t benefit from it think changes within the self isn’t important for social changes. Personal change is a journey a person takes of discovering something within themselves and acting upon a social change. That social change is society evolving to better ways. Jane Goodall talks about her experience in a moment of truth with self being absent in a moment of need in her writing titled In the Forest of Gombe, where she spends a few weeks in the forest following chimpanzees has helped her cope with her grief of her husband. She comes to the realization that her “self” was nonexistent and everyone in

It all began when someone left the window open. Fifteen years ago I never would have imagined anything like this to ever happen to me, now, I cannot imagine anything else. I was twelve; my brother was only seven. He was too young to have to go through something like this. One summer night our air conditioning burnt out. Our house was hotter than it was outside, forcing us to open a couple of windows. My mom was alone down stairs; my brother and I were getting ready for bed. “AHH!” my mother screamed. I looked at my brother and bolted down the steps, almost tripping as I went. Once I reached the bottom, I saw nothing and no one. After searching the house, I started to panic.

Sociology wasn’t something that I was familiar with throughout my life. However, now that I know the basics of sociology, I can identify the various ways to study behaviors. These forces have molded who I have become as a person and how I interact with society. Understanding how I have been affected by my immediate surroundings is a significant part of a better understanding how I have been changed by the greater society. All through this semester, I have begun to reminisce back on my life and pull apart the different ways that I have been affected and how they can be looked at sociologically.

When I was 14, I made a bucket list and the first item on that list was to change the world. specifically, I wrote change the world overnight. Reflecting back on that list 8 years later, I’m not sure what 14 year old me meant by that. However, what I am sure about is that even then, and quite frankly as far back as I can remember, all I wanted to do was make a difference. My whole life I have always been very aware of the privileges I have and the talents I possess and how I can use those to affect change in not only my immediate surroundings but in the greater community. There have been so many times that I wanted to become absorbed in the problems and disadvantages I face in my life. The fact that I am a black, bisexual woman raised in a single parent household, with a father who I did not know for the first four years of my life and who was merely a child support payment and monthly visit for the next 12, however I realized, that does not change anything. I am not claiming that I’m selfless or a martyr, I just learned how to channel my struggles into more productive means. I realized that there are individuals out there who need help and the perspective and experience I have as a marginalized individual is valuable and important.

You want to believe it or not, but it was so. It was a raining, dull summer day, not typical for South Jersey climate. I was rocking in my rocking chair on the porch while reading my Western Civilization history book. I was on the 15 chapter, reading about outstanding historical characters of the 17 century. I don’t know if it was relaxing historical book, or atmosphere, created by the weather, but I felt how I was drowning in sleep. Suddenly, I heard the loud noise coming from our garage where my crazy brother was recently working on some mysterious machine. Hearing that noise, I rushed into the garage where I found my brother screaming that he invented the time machine. At first, I thought it was his imagination, but then he suggested

There have been very few events throughout my lifetime that I feel have impacted or inspired me with such noteworthiness and that I know will change my outlook on the world and affect me forever. One of those events occurred when I traveled to Portugal, my parent’s homeland. From this excursion in 2007, I learned the importance of family, most importantly the distant kind. It provided me with a totally different perspective on the world and how large and extended one’s family can really be; even across cultures and continents. I felt so fortunate learning this lesson at a young age and growing to appreciate the ideals I was brought up with as a child. The family I have in Portugal has always been there; however, their faces have aged and

Old man Mr. Youssef changed my life forever when he introduced me to electronic engineering. His knowledge, confidence, enthusiasm, and character was unique enough for others to mirror. He knew how to dance salsa with the heavily populated Hispanic population of my high school. He smoked cigars and stank of cigarettes, but the young men and women in the classroom were blinded by the smell. Moreover, this 6 foot 5 inch giant made a difference in my life by molding me into a perspective student who now has a dream of becoming an engineer.

The end of school came eventually, and I abandoned dreams of the sixth grade. Luckily, I was transferring to another elementary school, but this offered me little consolation. Only dummies have to repeat a grade.