Personal Narrative: My Understanding Of Hope

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.

Every paper, no matter how well written needs to be revised and edited as time goes on. In some ways, life is similar. We all go through changes that influence us and shape the direction we are headed. Some of these changes come from our own prerogative while others are inspired by friends and family members. I know that my worldview has gone through this revision process. Even looking back to freshman year I had many of the same ideals, same focuses on values and hard work, but over time they have come to manifest themselves in different ways. For instance, I am much more willing to share my beliefs and opinions on controversial issues. This developed as I came to realize my ideas are worth arguing for and I gained a knowledge of

I was incredibly excited. School was starting tomorrow. The first few days were just icebreakers, learning everyone’s names, blah blah blah. Then the real learning began. Of course, teachers started to write our lessons on the board. I started to notice a few changes in what I was seeing. The words they were writing were just...black lines! I didn’t pay much attention to it, I just asked my friends what the board said. As the year went on, it affected me more and more, especially in math. I saw a 2 as a 6, and and an A as an 8.

I rush into my home and run up the stairs to my room. I jump on my bed and roll over to my laptop and open it quickly. I log onto the One Direction site and see that I made it in time to see the bid. I scroll and try and find my name and I see I'm in third place for the tickets and the time is running out. I've already bid $7000 for three tickets and backstage passes. The reason it's so expensive is because these passes are the last set of passes for their concert. 5sos is also playing so we would be meeting two bands and hearing both of them play.

I was a dresser for the PDG fall concert, 1968: The Cusp of Hope and Rage. I was backstage doing quick changes, helping with props, and communicating with tech on a headset with any unforeseen issues (which did occur multiple times). I worked with PDG for all of tech week and the six shows that they performed.

It seems like such a simple four letter word. Just like any other ordinary word, you know? I do not believe that is what hope is. Hope is such an obscure word. Hope is trickier to explain than you would think, so here is my best shot at it. I believe that hope is wishing that something specific will happen. Some people who had plenty of hope are the immigrants coming to America. “One night though, Cossacks invaded their settlement and, in their wild rampage, murdered anyone they could find…” “Two Cossacks burst into the house, found her aunt and cousin who were still downstairs, and killed them. Even as they heard the screams, Tanya’s mother instructed the children to climb down the ladder outside their house leaning against the loft window.” (True Immigrant Stories: Tanya at Ellis Island). Tanya was only eight years old when this happened. After all Tanya’s family went through, her family did not pass the medical exam when they got to America. Tanya had to go to the ‘dormitory’ all alone. She was scared and crying, but she did not give up hope that she would soon be reunited with her family. She soon found her family and they found out they did not have any diseases. Years later she married and had two children. Tanya then earned an M.A. degree in sociology in her seventies. I believe her faith, in something, that her family was going to be together again is hope. If there was a test for having hope, Tanya would pass it with flying

On May 29th, 2015 at about eight a.m., a group of eleven youth and three youth leaders from Fair Haven Baptist Church loaded into two vans and prepared for a twelve hour drive. Our destination was a new church located in the middle of a crime-packed, non-believing neighborhood in Sulfur Springs, Florida. For the week, we would partner with a missionary group called Hope Street. Our mission was to take flyers that advertised the local church and go door-to-door, inviting people to the grand opening, which would also be their Easter Sunday service. Little did I know of the huge impact Hope Street would make on the Sulfur Springs community.

I am talking about hope when you fail a test and feel like the world is over. The kind of hope you feel when you do not know if you made the right

The majority of my life I grew up believing that anyone who was deeply religious was that way because they were incapable of finding their own path in life, but instead needed to believe in some supernatural being to do it for them. I believed that their mind was so chained down, and that one must be so ignorant to believe in something that has no evidence in truly existing. Throughout my life I had been introduced to religious ideas, but the concepts never seemed to resonate with me. Ideas that could not be proven through empirical evidence and rational thought, to me seemed absurd. How could one be so naive to life by such concepts? It was very evident my mom's side of the family held much value in religion

One of the worst days of my life was Monday, February 23, a day that started like any other. After pressing snooze a few too many times I woke up rushing to get ready to make it to school, I wish I took my time to get ready a little slower and didn’t make it. Being a freshman the principal coming on the announcements during first period seemed like something normal, except now my heart stops dreading what he’s about to say when I hear “pardon the interruption.”

Many things throughout my life have changed for the worse, but also have changed for the better. As the days grow into weeks then those weeks into months you realize that the years are not as long as they seem. All people have a purpose in life, but getting to where they want to go is the struggle. People may or may not share the same opinion or views, but at some time may have similar challenges. I always believed that everyone has a story to tell people to need to be willing to listen. If you listen you might learn something that can help you along your journey in life. If you give people a chance you may not only receive some sort of guidance you may even learn something new. Something new and that you never knew before. The readings over

The America I Believe in has a past. That the past is full of heroes, and enemies and to live changing events. From the founding fathers to hobos; from cowboys to astronauts. Our history is full of great deeds. They come from communities large and small. They cared for God, country, and their family.

While Nat was watching the empty packet burning, a lot of thoughts came into his mind.

“Ya duermete Hijo,” my mother says as she peeks into my room telling me to sleep. It’s 10:56 P.M. and my parents’ day has come to an end; however, my day has just begun. “What will I learn today?” I ask myself. “Will I finally learn how to reflect an image on a horizontal axis? Or properly create gravity in a two-dimensional world?” My mind and soul, in a desire to absorb knowledge, prepare for another coding-binge. With the assistance of coffee and my laptop, I dive into a universe where I can generate and eliminate my problems simultaneously.

I have always been inspired by the resilience of the human spirit. This was especially true growing up in Lagos, Nigeria. I remember driving to high school and going past the Maroko neighborhood in Lagos Island. Driving through the neighborhood, I could see the brown muck of the river, and I looked at the shacks lined the riverbanks. Most were smaller than my bathroom at home; they all opened into the brown/pea colored water. I watched as inhabitants bathed, washed clothes and kitchen utensils and excreted into its waters. Continuing through the neighborhood only introduced me to extreme levels of poverty, the kind you might see in the pages of Time magazine. This was troubling to me; these were real people and this was the card they had been dealt. As I pondered on this, I saw a boy of about 8 or 10 years old bare-chested and in bright yellow shorts. As I watched he ran down the banks of the river, laughing a leaping with childhood excitement. In a split second, he was out of sight, but he remains imprinted