Personal Narrative Analysis

Kevin and I stepped into a whole new world in the fall of 2009. We began our degree program at Emmanuel School of Religion, which is now called Emmanuel Christian Seminary. We were working on our Masters of Arts and Religion. I was excited and nervous about going back to college. Our first day was terrifying. Kevin and I attended orientation the week prior to classes starting. There was a definite realization this academic program was going to be a challenge. However, I wanted a challenge. On the first day of class, we started with Greek. Our professor was Dr. Marwede. He opened the class with a test. He came over to my chair first and handed me a paper with a list of Greek words on it. My immediate reaction was shock, which Dr. Marwede realized I was overwhelmed by the look on my face. He told the class we could take it home as homework. Many of the students in the Greek class had previous experience with Greek; however, Kevin and I had no knowledge at all. We were overwhelmed. We were assigned five chapters and told to return the next day for a quiz with our homework.

I'm a 25 year old female and these events happened to me between the years 2001 through 2003. I use to live in the suburbs in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma with my mom, dad, younger sister, aunt(mom's sister), and my dog.

“Bzzz, Bzzz, Bzzz!” As I roll over from my fetus-type sleeping position, I notice my 6 o'clock alarm buzzing away beside me and that only more thirty minutes remains to aquire the last bit of my beauty sleep before the daily struggle begins. “Bzzz, Bzzz, Bzzz!” Half an hour later, I roll over knowing that I must wake up now, so that I can perform my morning rituals. I reach over to my shiny, black bookcase that I use as my nightstand and touch the dismiss key on my iPhone. I cannot keep my eyes open because I feel like death due to an overwhelming amount of exhaustion, even though I calculated that I slept the night before for at least seven and a half hours. I concluded, however, that the thought of school itself ensued my unmotivated, depressed

I found this week’s reading in the course text on custom fitting shotguns to be quite interesting because I’ve almost always had a shotgun in my home, but I’ve never done any work to customize the scatter guns I’ve owned… I think That’ll be changing pretty soon. Prior to getting into shotguns in this course I never had an idea as to how some custom work could enhance the performance of a shotgun. I knew there was a ton of work that could be done, but because I was never really into wing shooting or whatnot I never saw how it might help me out.

It was a normal Saturday night. My siblings and I were watching TV. I was nine, my older brother was twelve, and my younger sister was seven. My mom was cleaning up the kitchen like she usually does. My dad was on a trip with some of his friends to Baja California to ride motorcycles. We were expecting his nightly call checking up with us, and around 8 PM the phone rang. My mom answered the phone. It wasn’t my dad, it was his boss, Dale. It wasn’t until twenty minutes later when the phone call ended, she explained to us what happened. My dad had flipped over the handlebars of his motorcycle and was paralyzed from the neck down, and this occurred 12 hours earlier. Luckily his friends were all trained in basic first aid, and one was an EMT. All

The opposite of depression is note happiness, but vitality. And that was vitality that seemed to seep away from me in that moment. Everything there was to do seemed like too much work. And one of the things that often gets lost in discussions of depression is that you know it’s ridiculous. You know it’s ridiculous while you’re experiencing it. You know that most people manage to go through their daily routines and it’s not a big deal and yet you are nonetheless in its grip and you are unable to figure out any way around it. And so I began to feel myself doing less and thinking less and feeling less.

The concise time when an individual becomes a young adult is unknown and confusing. The authors have decided to pinpoint various milestones within to human life to gives readers a general idea of when we entered adult. According to Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman (2016), "However, in most states, they are not considered adult enough to drink alcoholic beverages until the age of 21. A person cannot become a U.S. senator until age 30 or president until age 35.” Contrary to the beliefs of the author, everyone has their own interpretation of what constitutes an adult.

hanging out with my family because I had not yet made any friends. When school started by the end of the first day I had quite a few friends. After seventh and eighth grade I started my high school days at Loveland High School. As a kid I moved around a lot, from small towns to big cities. It sucked as a kid, but in the long run it was good for my social skills. The earliest memory I have of moving is when I was going to kindergarten in fort collins and we moved to scottsbluff nebraska which is where I was born.

The summer of my eighth grade year I fell into depression. I say fell as a light term; it sucked me in. While my friends were at the river swimming every day, I stayed inside and wallowed in self-pity. There was a light at the end of the tunnel, though, because I found my passion for the written word. It was in books that I found my escape from reality. I loved everything from paranormal romance to historic fiction. Two very important things happened within that summer that impacted my views of reading and writing, I read L. J. Smith’s books, The Night World Series, which really impacted my sight of everything around me, and I got my first journal, which gave me a place to vent.

My parents got together in May of 1983, they were both 18 years old. My dad, Mark, was your all-American guy who loved muscle cars, dogs, and racing. My mom, Kathy, was the fiery neighbor girl who wouldn't take anything from anyone. After a short six months of dating, they got engaged, however, the engagement lasted nine years. Two years later, my brother Matt came along on June 29, 1994. Matt was the apple of my fathers eye, they did everything together. Illegally, my dad got my brother into racing early by forging his birth certificate to say he was older. Matt raced dirt bikes, go carts, quads, and three wheelers until he was twelve years old.

Everybody has their moment that truly defines them for the rest of their life, whether it be when they first learned how to ride a bike or a friend that they made. Some events are more harsh and abrasive than other events but everybody has one. My event was a fateful night in the summer of 2013. I was 13 years old.

SMACK the bat slammed right into my forehead. The next thing I know I’m sitting on the ground and everyone was silent. I stood up, brushed off my pants, and walked inside the house. I asked for an ice pack and laid on the couch until the party was over. I was pretty bummed that I didn’t get my chance to hit the pinata.

The third week at the Mayfield Village store I spent my time in the Deli Department. This week I learned the ins and outs of what a deli associate does on a daily basis. I learned about how to service the customer from behind the counter and all the questions to ask them in order to give them the quality of products that they want. There are many difficulties with the over the counter customer service. The associate always has to have live eyes and pay attention to the counter while you are competing other tasks. I learned what the deli has to do in the morning in order to prep for the day. They have to pre slice a few of the top selling products in order to run the efficiency of the counter. I learned the importance of cleaning the slicers

I thought this was going to be the best decision of my life, but the first week of my five-month journey told me otherwise. It began with a 12-hour drive to Ames, Iowa, and while most of you may not even know where Iowa is I’ll put it in perspective: from Texas, you have to take I-35N through Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri to finally reach the state of Iowa. During this drive, my parents constantly asked me if this was really the right decision and all listed the financial consequences that came with going to an out of state university. To make matters worse, I left my Kindle at the hotel that we stayed at in Kansas and had forgotten to pack my pillows along with a few other essential items which didn’t help my case about being responsible in front of my parents.

Growing up in the small town of New Castle, Colorado, my family and I remained very close. We spent the majority of our time together, working and playing around the small ranch my parents owned. My sister and I were just 3 years apart, and my brother joined our family much later. Being 9 and 12 years younger than his sisters, he began his journey much differently than ours. He was spoiled rotten by his sisters while he was young, and when we graduated and moved into college, he was granted the ‘only child’ role. Though this began in a very exciting manner, it became somewhat lonely. My sister and I came back on every break, but it didn’t compare to our childhood days of spending every evening and every weekend sharing the household chores