Personal Narrative: A Story That Changed My Life

Walking away from everything you once knew and starting over is never a picnic. Leaving Iraq, and moving to America has impacted my life more than anything. I was only 4 years old at that time, and the only English I spoke was “excuse me, water please.” My family and I did not know it then, but our lives were going to change; we would become “Americanized”. Learning English was one of the massive changes that occurred, the way I dressed (culture), and even the way I had power to go to school and educate myself.

Many people are crafted by the events that have had an impact them and made them who they are today. Like me, I have had so many experiences in my life that have made me who I am today, but there is one that defines me and made me how I am overall. The one experience that truly shaped me and made who I am today is an event that happened on my first day in 1st Grade.

When I was 13 years old, my parents started to think about moving to United States because my dad was already working here for a company. We started all the immigration related process which took a while to end. When I was 14, one day I came back from school and my parents told me we were moving to US in 2-3 months. When I heard it first, I was happy, but later I started thinking about how I will be leaving everything behind. My family, friends and neighbors whom I have been with since I was little, I will be leaving all of them in a few months. As the date approached closer, we started to pack more and more things. There was

PROMPT #2: PROMPT #2: The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

I have been in the Marine Corps for roughly three and a half years and throughout that time I have done many things. Most of the things that I have done were with Combat Logistics Battalion 26. For three years, I worked with that unit through work ups and a deployment and I have seen and done many unique things. However, nothing I did with CLB 26 felt fulfilling, but that all changed when I changed units to CLB 8.

culture. As a business student, I am no less influenced by money than the next

As a whole, I think my memoir is very truthful. Even though it happened almost a decade ago, I remember it very well because it was a turning point in my life. Everything as I knew it was going to change in an instant; my parents are separated, I’d only see my dad every other week, I’d have two of everything (birthdays, Christmas, etc), and other mental and emotional changes. From beginning to end, my memory is spot-on with this scenario. I wouldn’t have any reason to change it or believe it differently. It made me who I am today. I wouldn’t say I was exaggerating either. I definitely took this better than my brothers did and I have the strongest relationship with my father between my brothers and I. I wrote in first person because I feel like writing in third person doesn’t have the

Have you tried and failed to get together with a girl or guy? Well this roller-coaster of a story will surely get you to empathize or sympathize with me, or maybe if it is that big of a failure to you, both.

I’ve always thought of myself as a decent writer until I got prompts like this. I usually do well on writing assignments when I’m tasked to analyze two varying texts or record the development of some fictional character, but when it came to analyzing my life I’ve always had a difficult time. It's like everything becomes cluttered in my mind and I feel that I have so much that I need to say, yet so much that I shouldn’t. I remember just last year we had a memoir project with a rubric that stated that "the goal of a memoir is to describe the subject’s personal experiences, not to make the reader feel bad for the subject". I found that project especially difficult due to me always thinking that some of the best memoirs had to invoke some powerful

I haven’t been alive for too long and I’ve lived a pretty normal life though I do know of one specific event that changed me forever. On January 12 2010 I came home from school like every other kid in Haiti. It was a completely normal day. My mom was cooking in the kitchen, my aunt was holding my little sister while watching TV, my dad wasn’t home yet and I was by myself in the living room playing games on my dad’s computer. Then out of nowhere I hear a deep low loud rumbling noise. Right when I start to wonder what the noise was, the shaking starts. Being a normal eleven year old kid I just sat there in shock and fear and just watched as my whole world came crashing down around me. Paintings, vases silverware, my moms china set, they were

Hi Ms. Reese, You probably don’t remember me and to be completely honest, I couldn’t care less if you did. But it’s me, Jasmine. You had me as a student when I was in 5th grade at Whittier Elementary. I know, you’re probably wondering, Why on earth are you private messaging me?

Turning the page and trying to be better each day can be a challenge. At times trying to make such transformations were difficult. As an only child, I did not have brothers and sisters to turn to so quickly for help. I relied on myself and sometimes that was not the best thing for me to do. Surrounding myself with people to help me was the first thing that I did. I watched other peers throughout my last years of high school like class representatives, teachers, counselors and their staff. Although I did receive some help from my parents, the majority of ideas that I began to input into my head came from others such as my peers. I felt like I could relate better with people who were my own age and held certain positions, whether it was

Things aren't always what they seem. There's always something or a reason to why things happen. I believe this situation was one of them. The end of the school year was over for most of my friends, but I still had one month left. I had one more month left of work,projects, and assignments. Personally to me it wasn’t really a pain in the butt, simply because it would help me out a lot and I would also be ahead of my new classmates. The dedication and time I put into my last month of school was something that my teachers thought should be rewarded. We were warned that there was a camping trip coming, and ahead of time i had already planned to to not attend, simply because of my lack of confidence and insecurity. I was always that kid that would like to be alone and rather sleep. I would not even socialize unless I knew who that person was, most of the time it was my friends and family. That was simply how i was and that was my way of living.

In these event my life has been completely altered. Whether it was through my personality or physical things. I cannot complain about these events because as far as I know, they have changed my life for the better.

As I lay awake in the large house that my grandparents left me. I thought about every memory I had ever had there that I could remember. And when I tell you this I had a lot of them, some memories were still fresh in my mind. I could tell you every single detail of what happened. Whether it was a good or bad day for me. Like the day that I was shaken awake my grandmother. The day that my parents had died.