Personal Narrative: Success By Marva Collins

My mother, Amy Neuzil, has grit because she works hard everyday to get things done. She is the reason the word grit was invented. She stumbles out of bed every day at six a.m. Then she retrieves my sister, Madison, from her sleeping quarters and dresses her in the fanciest get-up you’ve ever seen. While she is completing that task, she also has to dress for work or college. While cramming a turkey sandwich, blueberries, and five or six bulky blocks of frosted plastic ice into a teeny tiny black insulated lunch bag. After she has finished that magic act, she is practically late for whatever she is trying to get to. So, she frantically gathers Madison into the Buick. Then she starts rushing back and forth through the front door, to grab

Having grown up in a time and within a society where the terms fail and lose are rarely spoken to children in any aspect of their lives, I generally considered myself a success in everything I did. I received medals, ribbons, certificates, awards, and trophies for academics, sports, and for just being a kid. So in my mind, for the majority of my life, I was unaware that I had failed or lost at anything. And having a father that is a U.S. Marine, failing and losing were not things that I wanted to tell him that I had done. Now that I am tasked to determine how I have grown from my failures, I realize that I have failed, that failure is not the end, and that I have excelled in several areas of my life due to what I have learned from those failures.

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.

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.

According to their BMI chart I was considered obese at two hundred and twenty pounds of solid muscle. I was told to drop down to one hundred and eighty pounds. The worst part about it was that I had just three months. I worked hard at the gym, three times a day, seven days a week. While going though this challenged I became homeless. I could not let this stop me because I knew it was all temporary. It took me just about a month and half to drop about forty pounds. It was probably the second hardest thing I ever had to do. When I dropped the weight, I was able to move to Massachusetts with family and keep up the recruitment process in NYC. It was not an easy thing to do, constant mailing, scanning, phone calls, and some traveling back and forth just to complete it all. Finally after a year of the first ever initial call I was being shipped to boot camp in

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.

I spoke with Sarah Morra regarding the home. She listened carefully and patiently to my inquiry and then informed me that the home was still available. Then, she mentioned that it was tenant occupied and once an offer was accepted, the tenants would have sixty days to vacate. In addition, she informed me that it was being sold "As-Is." Sarah provided brief information about the property, however, she did not do so in an upbeat and encouraging manner. Although Sarah was friendly, she made no effort to build rapport. In general, I found her professionalism to be

Yes, I do have several personal life experiences where I have overcame adversity and transformed into the person I am today. As a military child, I was blessed with the opportunity to spend my youth on Feltwell Royal Air Force Base in England and Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. Since I lived in relative isolated locations, I functioned entirely on base; therefore, I was protected from the harsh realities of the world. Everyone I met understood me, for they experienced the same things I did. However, this changed in the winter of my seventh grade year. My mother’s father was diagnosed with Stage Four lung cancer, so my father applied for a Humanitarian Reassignment. Thankfully, the request was approved and my family was reassigned to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in

“Life isn't always going to give you a beautiful beginning, but in order for your life to get beautiful it's going to have to get ugly.” This quote, by Markus Anthony, was definitely a big part in my life. Although, my life wasn’t all bad growing up, I did make some mistakes and I didn’t have the standard family. Of course with growing up you make a lot of mistakes along the way, but by far my biggest mistake was the one that really affected my life. It was the mistake that had me go from extremely happy, to depressive and self conscious, and then scared about what would happen next.

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

Blood flow rushing through my veins, lungs heavily breathing through thin air, heart pounding loudly, I couldn’t bear. Slowly I unsealed my eyes from its long tender slumber, and grazed everything around me. Pitch black light loomed in my sight. I perceived nothing except darkness and a shadowy site. Terrified of my blindness, cascades of water started whooshing down my eyes. With all my might, I stretched out my long podgy arms as stiff as I can as it hit a large rigid structure similar to a wall. Four compacted fortifications built to confine me inside this hollow full of terror.

It all started in the of 2000. I jennifer Biggers was living home with my mother and two sister's which my mother was pregnant with another little girl. And I was pregnant with my first time and yes my mother and i was pregnant at the sametime in the year of 2000. we lived in a two bedroom apartment.My mother was a drug addict of her choice of cocain, which didn't stop her from taking care of her children, until it was time to have that third baby girl m

That moment, thirteen years ago, was the moment that changed everything. I was young, at only 22 years old, and filled with excitement for the new job that began only one week prior. The typical first day jitters were beginning to settle, though I still felt new and quite anxious. My desire to fit in, make new friends, and to impress my peers radiated through me. I was on a mission to excel in my new role. Little did I know, when I began that day, my naive self would be in for a rude awakening. I would soon be discriminated against.

Monday was sweet, emotional and so addicting. This is my first read from author E.L. Todd and I wasn’t sure what to expect, but this book hooked me from the beginning. I loved Hawke and Francesca. They were so hot together and I couldn’t stop myself from reading.

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.