Reflection Paper

When I first decided to expand my education, it had been so long since I had been to school, and I was very hesitant. I talked at length about my decision with my husband and with his encouragement, decided to enroll but still was not quite sure which degree program to enroll in. I knew that this was something that I had always wanted to do since I obtained my Associates Degree in Nursing, but I did not have the courage, nor did I want to give up the time with my family and children. I second guessed my abilities and my knowledge because it had been so long since I had been in college. Now that my children are about to graduate high school and

I volunteered taking care of children, at a recreation center, where parents couldn’t afford expensive day care. I spent time at feral cat clinics to help reduce the overpopulation of cats. I began volunteering at three square and placing applications to help hospitals and soon plan to spend time with soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Through my community service I learned to communicate better, take on leadership roles and earned life changing opportunities along the way. Through volunteering I grew as a person, I matured, learned responsibility, and realized what I wanted to do with my life.

Because of this I am often given the opportunity to give back and to serve others. One of my favorite parts of serving others is spending time with people and forming unique relationships. I have served in many ways through my school such as through key club, through the softball mentoring program, through the J-Term community service, through being a writing tutor for the English department, and through helping at the middle school track meet. I am fortunate to belong to a church that emphasizes serving others. I have been involved in many service projects through our youth program.

What motivate me most is how well Peace Corps overlaps with my life aspirations. I plan to attain my master’s degree in international economic development and study for the Foreign Service examination. A key aspect in accomplishing my goals is to go abroad and directly interacting with diverse communities that I am so keen on helping. I have worked with many non-profits in the metro Atlanta community that aim to decrease the homeliness population or help inner city youths. This combine with the vast

I take great pleasure in the time and ability I am given to serve others. Service comes in various forms and I strongly believe that no act is too small to be of big help to others. Serving others is vital in my life because I am enlightened to pause on my own worries in order to care and act for groups, causes, and people who are in need.

While growing up in a small town with nearly 3,500 people and exactly two red lights, I heard a lot of comments made by students that degraded where we lived. Any comments from “our schools scummy and doesn’t teach us anything” to “there is nothing to do around here”, were statements I heard daily. I cannot tell you how wrong they were. Growing up in such a small school with a graduating class of 93 helped me build a strong relationship with nearly every teacher, and also shaped me into the person I am proud I’ve become and becoming. I was not exposed to nearly as many terrible events that large scaled schools are, and I also knew every single person in my class’s name. Although knowing everything about everyone wasn’t always positive, it definitely helped me learn a lot. It taught me you will absolutely NOT get along with everybody in life, but it is crucial to learn to find a positive in everyone. If you don’t, you will not be as successful as you could be. The same people that put down my beautiful and “boring” town are the same ones that didn’t remember to look for a positive in it. The positive’s being, it made us who we are. I definitely agree that it’s boring, but there is something beautiful about the simplicity features in life.

From birth I have lived in the same little community, a quiet place where literally everybody knows everybody. Come hunting season or Sunday morning the quiet dead little community all of a sudden looks like a metroplex. Everyone shares a common love for God, family, and the great outdoors; these core values have directly shaped me into the person I am today. I have been raised up in a very close knit family, and being that we all live on the same county road, every Sunday evening without exception my whole family gathers together to enjoy a good home cooked meal, and the time spent with each other.

Whenever I hear the word Transition I immediately get this feeling of butterflies in my stomach. Most of the time transitioning means that something is about to change and change can sometimes be a scary thing. College is something I always knew I wanted to do when the time came, but it was also something I always pushed away in my mind because it was not in my comfort zone. Since neither of my parents went to college I never really heard about the experiences of college but if I would have based my opinion on college from my parents I probably would not be here at ECU. Coming to college has been a change but it is something that I knew I needed to do to achieve my dreams and goals for my future. My parents are my biggest supporters and they have always told me to go college and get an education. I feel that life is one enormous risk and sometimes those risks will change your life forever.

Service is also an important to me. When I was younger I was involved in Girl Scouts. My troop often

At this moment there is currently 7,430,931,842 people in the world. Nearly 3 billion of those people are currently living in poverty. Today, 350,000 babies will be born. The world, continues to grow, to prosper, as I sit in my bedroom staring out the window waiting for creativity to strike and give me the words that so effortlessly describe me. There is currently only one person in the world with the name Gabrielle Vozzi, and right now she is attempting to describe something that is indescribable: herself.

In 1994, my parents immigrated to Canada from Vietnam to seek better living conditions and a promising future for their soon-to-be children. However, to live in a free nation filled with opportunities, the two left everything behind. While living in rent, my father worked full-time at a factory while my mother had found a job as a cashier. Although they had a sustainable income, my father understood that raising a child would cost them more than they were currently making. In 1997, my father decided to study computer science at Langara in search for a better-paying job while working part-time as a security guard. Meanwhile, my mother took up housekeeping, working at two different hotels to earn more money for their coming child. Understandably, my parents had made their lives much harder immigrating to Canada, but their sacrifices - I can say - has paid off.

Most recently, I have been volunteering in the hospital. Volunteering is a rewarding experience for me. This past summer, I volunteered at Northwest Community Hospital where I helped out at the nurses’ station of the rehabilitation unit by answering call lights and doctors calls and by paging the appropriate nurses and PCTs (patient care technicians). Moreover, I volunteered at the Visitor’s Entrance front desk where I was able to sign patients in and out, direct them towards the rooms of their loved ones, deliver flowers and other packages, and help discharge the patients. It was truly an amazing experience to be a part of because I was able to see different departments of the hospital that I wasn’t able to see through my medical chemistry course.

Every student deserves the best chance at getting the highest level of education they can, however, some students need a little extra support that others may not. A student, Axel, who is currently in my classroom has had a hard time keeping his focus and is often avoidant when it comes to his work. It has become clear that his avoidance becomes a distraction to the whole class. His behaviors currently include but are not limited to: rolling around on the floor during rug lessons, yelling across the room, walking around the room talking to friends, sharpening his pencil five or more times throughout the day, asking to go to the bathroom at inappropriate times, spending fifteen to twenty minutes in the

From the early moments of my childhood, I remember seeing my parents go to Russian Orthodox Church a lot. They would explain to my younger brother and me what was right and what was wrong from the religious perspective. On my 4th birthday, my grandma gave me the Bible for kids as a present, and I remember my mom reading it to me before going to bed. Back then it was just another interesting story that happened somewhere very far away. And yet mom would always find a way to tell these stories in such a manner so they translated really well into the reality we were living in. The more I grew up the more I realized that there was something missing in the big picture of my understanding of the world. I saw a lot of suffering that was happening everywhere, death, natural disasters, and I thought there must be a reason for all of it. Otherwise, the God does not care about any of us. I started to look for the answers everywhere: in the philosophical and religious books, movies, wise counsel from the people who lived a long life. I could not find the truth in church because the whole purpose of its existence with all its rules and restrictions, its idea of God who is something or someone out there, separate from us, and the only being that knows all the answers, was totally alien to me; mainly so due to my unwillingness to accept the fact of transferring all the responsibility for everything one does to someone else. I believed it to be a weakness to acknowledge one’s bad thoughts and deeds as something natural, as an external influence of the evil spirits. For me, it sounded like people who agreed with this concept simply wanted to escape the punishment for what they had done, choose an easy way out.

Many governesses before Maria considered the von Trapp children to be incorrigible. They hated the children for the mischief that they do and the children hated the governesses in return. Hate begets hate.