Personal 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)

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.

My heart trickled down to one beat per minute. I slowly realized the different types of people surrounding me on a day to day basis. I asked myself the following question: “Alex, why have you molded yourself into a new person?” Realizing the pace and discomfort my life was going towards, I sought to answer the question. I had lost a genuine friendship built over several years. This loss had affected me very deeply to the point I did not recognize the myself in the mirror anymore. Entering freshmen year, I was unable to enjoy the social interaction which took place around me. Trusting new people became nearly impossible. I punished those who had my best interest at heart, because I assumed they would betray me like my previous friendship. I had also assumed that every new friendship I built had an immediate expiration date. This means I chose to purposefully distance myself in order to not get hurt. The Alex Curry people became acquainted to was a falsified character of my true self. My pain developed my character into a overly trusting person to a person who could not even trust their family anymore.

In my life probably bad things happen more often than good; but I always try to make the best out of every situation. The events that happened to me do not match up with my personality but they had somehow change the way I act or think. With my short time living in this world that can be cruel and break anyone I learned that life is what you make out of it. I don’t worry about my future too much because everything that you had planned out can be ruined in a split second. I just go one step out at time, even though my parents get mad at me, but I’m still going to try to achieve my same goal.

On August 2, 1999, I was born on a Monday afternoon, at 2:30 p.m, in Hospital Conde De S. Januario. My family resided with my grandmother at Rua Formosa, Apartment 7 on the first floor. She lived behind the Cathedral of Macau, which is a famous landmark and tourist attraction. While my brother, Salman, and I were growing up, we attended the same pre-schools. One of the schools was called Seng Kung Wui. In the morning, all the grades would line up and wait for the teacher to come escort them upstairs to the classroom. I could barely last an hour without being with my brother, and I would cry if he didn't stand in my grade’s line. As a result, Sal started waiting in my line with me, until my teacher came to get my class. After I went upstairs, he would run back to his line to be with his friends. Almost everyday we wore matching outfits, and he would hold my hand while we walked inside because I did not want to be alone. After school, our Avo (grandma in Cantonese), would take us to play in the Sao Francisco Park, get ice cream, or walk through the markets to get our daily groceries. I can still remember walking through the streets and taking in all of the sights, smells, and sounds. I loved the strong aroma of spicy fish ball soup or the overwhelming scent of cigarette smoke that filled the air. The markets were filled with countless friendly faces and a wide variety of merchandise waiting to be sold.The voices of locals bartering over prices and motorcycles racing down the

Why write about myself? Most people tend to write about themselves for therapy, but not me. I believe that people's stories can motivate others, help others, and become a support system for some people. It was an enlightening journey for me that perhaps you might find interesting, so

Knowing who you are is an important step in life. Knowing your identity is something that is expected of you before you even graduate highschool. When students are being surveyed for acceptance, they are being chosen for what they have done rather than what they can do. Granted, what you have done is a good reflector of what you can do, but what you can do isn’t what you have done. I come from a family that values hard work and character. No one in the entirety of my family has any special diploma or fancy piece of paper that tells everyone what they are good at. No one in my family has any clue what I am writing about right now.

It has been an eventful four years here at Christopher Dock. I went through a lot and I am proud of who I am becoming. I am not the shy, quiet and awkward kid that I was coming here but instead, I grew into a kind, confident and selfless individual ready to take on the world. Thanks to the adversity that I went through, I was rewarded with what I desire the most in this life: God, Friends and Family. The adversity that I had go through was letting go of my past, restoring my lost faith to God and stop being dependent onto my brother Tyler. Without doing those three things, I would not be where I am today. Now I would like to reflect on my growth throughout all of these four years.

Unfortunately, it started Tuesday, May 10th, 2011, usually I go by my parent’s house before work and have coffee and donuts with my mother while we chit-chat about current events about our lives, but, I was running late for work that day.  Afterward, at 10:45 a.m. I started calling my mother’s cell phone but she never answered. At noon, my phone rang and I assumed it was her, but, it was my father. The minute I answered the phone I knew something was wrong. He uttered, “your mother and sister had an accident and the police officer said we must arrive at the hospital right away.” I could feel my gut at that very moment, my life just fell apart. I abandoned work and met up with my father at his house and we rode together, soon after we arrived a Florida Highway Patrol called us inside a small room and asked if we could identify the driver license. Regrettably, it was my mother, I could feel the tears flowing down my cheeks forming streams, my breathing was rapid and the walls were closing. The officer then stood up and gave us his sincere apologies. He indicated that my mother was pronounced dead at arrival and that my sister was inside the trauma part inside the hospital that the doctors were working with her now. I began screaming no and felt my father wrap his arms around my shoulders. Nonetheless, he did his best staying calm and strong for us. Next, we asked if we could visit my sister, but, he said he would ask the doctor and left the room. However, moments went by, I

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.

The last four years of my life were definitely some for the books. With ups and downs, I was learning no matter what. I was learning how to deal with myself personally, my peers, my family, my financial situation, and my academic situation. I also taught myself that it was better to be alone than to be with the wrong group of friends. That being said, it is not always bad to be hanging out with the “wrong” people.

Growing up I aspired to be everything my parents wanted me to be, successful, intelligent, and stable. They were big examples in my life of what hard work can achieve. My dad would put work above anything else, and wanted me to learn the same work ethic. However, work and making money was not everything to me. Everyone was trying to direct my destiny, but deep down I know my own personal legend and how I am supposed to fulfill it. Similar to Santiago, I sometimes battle with my own conscience whether to trust someone or even myself.

Despite how average my life has been thus far, especially compared to others, I have learned so much. Whether I was faced with minor complications or major decisions, I had much knowledge to gain. Regardless of the outcome of my actions, I simply reflected on what I had to learn and carried on. Because, regardless of whether I like it or not, time will continue forward, even if I’m not. If not my age, then it’s my experiences that define who I’ve grown to become.

It was the beginning of summer after my seventh grade year. The sun was blazing, the birds were chirping, and I felt an overwhelming sense of freedom. Life seemed great, until the next day when I was bored out of my mind and had nothing to do. During middle school, I followed my brother, Isaac, around like a mime. Whatever he did I would aspire to do the same. This was no different when, bored out of my mind, I found out my brother was going to go disc golfing with the neighbor friends. When Isaac asked me if I wanted to come with, I jumped up, ran to my bike, and told him I was ready whenever he was. I had never heard of what “disc golf” was, but I knew that since my brother was doing it, it was cool! So I followed Isaac and the neighbor friends all the way to Northside Park, sweating immensely from the summer heat and from how quickly I was biking. On the first hole, Isaac gave me my own disc to borrow for the round. This sport was completely foreign to me, so I threw my disc as hard as I possibly could, in an attempt to impress Isaac and his friends. Not only did the disc go absolutely nowhere, but I threw it so high that the wind actually pushed it backwards. I felt humiliated as everybody laughed at me. Isaac, however, came up to me and explained to me how discs fly and the proper way to throw. Each hole, I could visibly see my disc traveling further than the previous hole. Every time Isaac saw me doing something improperly, he would correct me and tell me how to fix

As I boarded the charter bus to my second year of Unidiversity (an annual summer youth trip in Tennessee), I could not begin to imagine the person I would become as a result of this trip. As a teenager going into my last year of middle school, I was determined to have the time of my life. I wanted to have fun, make a better connection with friends, play games, laugh, and really enjoy the time with my leaders and friends. At this point in my life, I was hiding a dark secret that only two other people in my life knew about; I was bisexual. As an almost eighth grader, I was comfortable with my sexuality, but I didn’t know how to explain it to others, and although I knew my friends would accept me for who I was, something was holding me back. I would walk around hiding behind I mask that I thought was permanent, a mask that told everyone that I was one thing, when I was really another. Little did I know that I was about to rip off the mask, and show my true self for the first time in my life.