Personal Narrative: Challenging The Status Situation

I never thought I would be labeled an outsider, a misfit even. As I trudged my way through the halls of my small town high school, I would endure the gazing pairs of eyes, that belonged to my peers, followed by whispering and often times some laughter. I always used zone out during those repetitive speeches and commercials about the effects of gossiping and rumors; never did I imagine that one day I would be on the receiving end of of the everyday potshot. Growing up I was always the center of attention, the one everyone yearned to be friends with, never was I the antisocial child in the corner with nowhere to turn… not until high school. They say high school changes you. They say high school accounts for some of the greatest years of

High school. The place where your supposed to find yourself, determine who you are and who you want to be. Some people take this opportunity for good and some take it for granted. Those who abuse this opportunity end up broken and lost and they never find their true self’s till they have lost everything they ever thought they had.

There I was on the block next to the High Bar. It was about 5:00 at night when my coach told me to do a Kip. As I got up on the bar my nose filled with the smell of chalk. I started to swing, and as I came out of my half turn I looked good. Everything seemed fine but as I came to the part of the Kip where I have to pull my legs up to the bar, I slammed my shins into the bar. My momentum was stopped and I dropped on to the mat, missing the Kip. I felt like I had let down my coach and I had let down myself too. That day I experienced failure. That failure made me want my Kip even more so I worked harder and had support from my teammates.

I’ve always been an outsider, it’s been hard for me to build friendships and relationships. Not too long ago, there I sat in the corner of the room in the way back, trying to hide from the world, and be myself. I didn’t really want to get involved with anything or anyone. I was afraid to open up, talk to others, maybe because I was afraid to get rejected. Until, I met the best people I could ever meet, my best friends Marisa Mendoza, Jessica Contreras and Deseray Reyes, the ones who up to this day have sticked by my side, at my best, and worst moments. They have all been a big part of my life, I can enjoy every minute I spend with them. For me, they aren’t only my friends they are like my sisters.

Overall, my first semester has been going pretty well. The semester is going like a roller coaster up, down, and fast. I have some bad days and some good days. Through this semester, I have many challenges I faced which I honestly did not want to face. Even though I just wanted to dodge or run away from the challenges, I still face them and fought through them. Some challenges I face this semester, hopefully not in the next, are procrastination, time management, and laziness. I have not only gone through challenges; I have also gone through successes. I am proud of turning assignments on time, passing tests and quizzes, completing my SCR points, and being involved in clubs. Being in Biomed has helped me grow as a student in the area of knowledge.

2014 Fall Semester in the begining was going pretty good i was excited to began school , adapting to the new college life, and interacting with friends and new people. I was attending all my classes on time , studying , and completing the required assigments that needed to be done. I also was working a full-time at Gensis Logistics it wasnt easy trying to manage my schedule , but i tried to make it work the best i could. MTE 1 , 3 , and SDV was a breeze to me I was completing my assigments , studying , and understanding the information that was given to me. Now on the otherhand ENG wasn't hard for me i just didnt understand the content that was teached by the teacher. English was always the strongest subject for me so i couldnt understand why it was such a problem in college , maybe it was the teacher and her teaching methods. I never understood any information that was given it seemed to me like our class was always off topic one class period we would talk english, and then another class period we would talk about something else besides english. Then she assigned papers and assigments that was unfamilar to me it seem like everytime she assigned the class papers

The social norm I broke is making too much eye contact, or staring excessively, at my teachers. While sitting in class, I stared at my teachers more than I stared at my paper or looked around the classroom. It is usually normal for students to stare down at their desks and not look at the teacher a lot.

When I was 5, my hands grew old and weary, tired of construction and calloused from work. Day after day after day, I would fashion new worlds and cultures out of little LEGO blocks. I worked fastidiously- creating tiny planes, guarded forts, and expansive cities that swept from one end of the carpet to the other. (I loved to make castles with booby-trapped moats and false walls and hidden entrances.)

I was six, I knew that we couldn’t stay one place forever. That concept was foreign. Every few years my family and I were stationed to a new place, this time 45 minutes away. Of course, being the stubborn and impatient six year old I was, that seemed a light year away. I have never had friends that lasted over 3 years. Either they left, or I moved. This time, I left first. My friends were my world. I was happy. They were devastated to get the news of my departure. Tears were mixed with the “goodbyes”, and the occasional “I’ll never forget you”.

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.

What stops me from putting my views out there or trying to make a differences is one i'm young so you will always have people who are much older say she or he is too young to know what they're talking about. Or that I don't have enough schooling about politics in order to know what saying or to know what i'm trying to debate about for example would you lesson to the person who's had more experiences in learning in general or to a high school whose only taking civics for one semester . if i were to wait a few years later and made the effort to study more about politics ,law or economics and i was compared to the same person again i would have a much greater chance of being lesson to about my views ,and ideas to help out and get my ideas out

I was twelve years old when my family immigrated to the United States from India. Moving to a new continent with an unfamiliar culture was a difficult experience within itself, and getting enrolled into a new school, was the most appalling part of it. I remember feeling a wave of panic as the doors to my middle school opened that morning as I rushed inside along with hundreds of other children, as we try to navigate ourselves through the crowded cafeteria. I remember walking over to the lunch lines to buy breakfast on my first day of school, and with confidence, I approached the woman standing beside the breakfast cart and asked “Can I buy a sweet bun please?” She leaned closer and said, “pardon me?” “I want the sweet bun”, I

Throughout every single person’s life, they face a different type of challenge. Old or young, there will always be a wall to break down. One the the major barriers I've had to break down was at a very young age, but that didn’t matter. At any age, I could do anything I wanted to do through determination.

Social Injustice seems to be an epidemic that inhibits all parts of the world, and can affect people in various ways. Ever since I was a young boy I constantly heard adults converse about social injustices like racism and poverty, but I never fully grasped the negative effects that these injustices can have on an individual until I experienced it at first hand. I am an immigrant. I came to the United States at the age of eight, and at the time I didn’t comprehend the difficulties that I would encounter; I didn’t realize how different I would be from all the other children in my neighborhood and in the classroom. From all the differences that we shared, however, the most conspicuous were the language that I spoke and the way that I dressed.

Social Identity. It is what makes us whole and what makes up ourselves in our mind and how we are perceived in public. It is “Through the process of self- categorization or identification, an identity is formed, (stets and burke, 224). Social identity is “a person’s knowledge that he or she belongs to a social category or group”(stets and burke, 224). Self- categorization is “the self is reflexive in that it can take itself as an object and can categorize, classify or name itself in particular ways in relation to other social categories or classifications” (stets and burke, 224). No person is only made up of one social identity. It can vary from person to person what is your social identities but there is generally a lot that you are actually