Personal Narrative: Breaking The Cycle Of Poverty

Imagine being at the peak of your high school career, personally, academically, and athletically. For me, that was my sophomore year. I was selected to be on the homecoming court, I won a free class ring, and a free corsage and boutonniere for prom. I was on my way to a 4.0 grade point average. I was pulled up to Varsity basketball, I became the 100 meter hurdle regional champion, and I qualified for two events at the Division 4 State meet for track and field. In one split second, a clip of a hurdle, that was over. My first race of the day was the preliminary 100 meter hurdles. Once the race started, I was calm, focused, and determined. I was starting to make my way up to the front of the pack when I clipped my trail leg on the eighth hurdle.

At the age of nine, I watched my uncles lowering my father into the ground and what took his life was addiction. All my life I have watched addiction take over the lives of people, I love. My father's side of the family, besides my grandparents, has always faced addiction. Although, addiction runs through my blood, I will not take the same path I have watched people take all my life. I will be the one to end the cycle. Watching the majority of my family waste their life has motivated me to change the direction and better myself from living a life of addiction and misery.

Growing up in poverty was difficult, not being able to buy the school yearbook or a book from the book fair. As I got older I made a promise to myself that no matter what I would not live like that as an adult. I would be successful in life. Neither of my parents went to college, I think because of that I grew up in not an ideal setting. All of my school career I have worked for my end goal to be happy. Along my journey there have been some speed bumps. In 8th grade I was diagnosed with clinical depression. I stopped trying no matter how hard I wanted to succeed. By the summer before 11th grade I was doing (good) I was taking my sat and going to graduate a year eary. When school started back up I realized I was getting worse. I went the first

Growing up with a father in the military, you move around a lot more than you would like to. I was born just east of St. Louis in a city called Shiloh in Illinois. When I was two years old my dad got the assignment to move to Hawaii. We spent seven great years in Hawaii, we had one of the greatest churches I have ever been to name New Hope. New Hope was a lot like Olivet's atmosphere, the people were always friendly and there always something to keep someone busy. I used to dance at church, I did hip-hop and interpretive dance, but you could never tell that from the way I look now.

Service is important to Confirmation because it serves others and also God. The Holy Spirit inspires and helps us serve others. Service is a way to give back. It is a way to be grateful for what we have and help those who have less than us. Through service we are doing God’s work by helping others. For seventh and eighth grade year, I did many different acts of service including; works of mercy, church service, community service, and liturgical experience.

Hi iam Edgardo Flores i was born in casa grande, az not that far away from our state capital,Phoenix, Az.theres nothing better to do in a hot summer than going out with the friends to a lake and have a blast riding jet skis boats and my favorite, swimming!My activites of the day are shooting,riding horses,and my favorite one is quad riding.Thats right! ive been doing these fun exciting hobbies since i was 9 years old.pretty young huh?

They called me an apple. Since I was supposedly red on the outside, but white on the inside, I was automatically a walking bullseye. Being one of the many oppressed Aboriginals, I understand their need to hurt someone else in an effort to release some of their internal pain. I understand why so many give up or turn into raging alcoholics in an effort to numb their pain. Coming from a reservation, my greatest challenge was proving to everyone that all the stereotypes about my people were fallacious. However, the need for a government and an education system that won’t keep on failing us repeatedly is imperative. The only way that I can make my voice heard is to break these stereotypes and to reach a higher education; hence my application for

I personally think that in personal narrative a literacy work has more of an impact. I believe this because it can convey more details than a movie based on the literacy work. Both I believe are good ways to portray the sense of time but in different ways. In a movie you see more of how the directors see things instead of being able to imagine it

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.

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.

I was born in Australia on January 12, 1999, however I have lived on the Hawaiian Islands since I was five and for most of my life. I have traveled back to Australia several times to visit family and even though I’m an Australian i do consider myself semi-Hawaiian in a sense. To give back to the islands I would love to help the next generation to have a childhood that is filled to the brim with Hawaiian Nature. One idea to give them this experience would be to go into Waipio Valley with the children from different schools in the Big island and explore the valley with them. Some activities while we are in the valley would be hiking, examining native plants, horse riding, swimming in rivers and the ocean, and then

“Hey you want to drive”, my step-dad yelled over the loud engine of blue grizzly 4x4 quad I yelled “yes!!”, so as I got one the quad I put on my helmet and fased the strap on the same color helmet.

Being the youngest of four siblings, I got dragged on many of college visits throughout the years. I found the setup to be fundamentally the same: Prospective students accompanied by parents, usually more nervous than the students, enthusiastic tour guides ready to impress, and admissions counselors trying to be as accommodating as possible. I never understood how my siblings knew the right school for them. The only thing they said was, "when you find the right school, it feels like home." Over time, my siblings had created a joke about that saying. Little did I know that in seven years, the saying would come true for me. When I first toured RPI, I approached it as any other school I had seen with my siblings. Following the obligatory bookstore visit, I told my mom that we did not have to go on any more tours. I finally understood what my siblings were saying. I found my home at RPI.

Home is the beginning of one’s book. It is where your story begins, forms its characters, shows its purpose, and reveals its ora. This is how mine is written. Home is on the buzzing highway down a bumpy gravel road. It’s Brandon, Mississippi. It is the only home I’ve ever known. Home is the smell of homemade biscuits and tomato gravy on Saturday mornings. It is “Bless Your Heart” and “Yes Mam” and “No Sir”. The little bedroom in the back of a grey double-wide where Carrie Underwood songs played and where I learned to curl my hair and put on mascara. My cousins and I running around with mason jars, chasing the lightning bugs. Bar-B-q on the back porch and never meeting a stranger. It is the morals learned and the identity

As a family of six I was raised on section 8, barely surviving on welfare. I shared beds and clothes with dreams of making it out of poverty, but with little guidance I was at risk of continuing this lifestyle for generations to come. My mother was always at work and my father was absent, which made me skip childhood and mature in order to become independent. I was never that child who had their mother sitting at the table telling them how to do their homework, but rather a child who stood on the table all day and night trying to teach myself. I knew from an early age that I wanted more in life than used clothes and a bike as transportation. I had the dream of attending college and becoming a doctor in philosophy.