There is an Indian aphorism “Matha Pitha Guru Deivam” which translates to “Mother, Father, Teachers, God.” And I believe it. I started my life as an amorphous piece of clay that could have been molded to any one of thousands of shapes. As fate would have it, I was born in Birmingham, Alabama to South-Indian immigrant parents. My parents, newly married, had come to the US with just two pieces of luggage, a ton of hope, and enormous faith. They were determined to improve in this magnificent country through education, ethics, and hard work.
Over the years, the nature of my father’s job required him to continuously relocate from state to state. We moved to Houston when I was just 4 months old, and it was there that I started my first play school at a local community church, and where my mother continued her education at the University of Houston. When the recession hit, my father lost his job, and my mother halted her education. Struggling to make ends meet, my parents made
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Growing up on two opposite sides of the globe, I have encountered diversity. I have friends from all around the globe, and I’ve celebrated holidays from Chinese New Year, to the 4th of July, to Diwali, to Christmas. I have absorbed the cultural and traditional values of converging backgrounds. Understanding my parent’s story, and the adversities they overcame in order to build this life helps me understand the importance of being passionate and persevering no matter what. Everything I do references back to my heritage and culture; and inheritance I am proud to receive from my parents. My dreams and aspirations are not limited by the bounds encompassed by others; what I want to do, I know I can achieve. I am looking forward to my next stage of my life, hopefully at your distinguished university. I am hoping that with your training I will someday be able to repay my parents and community for making me who I am
From a very young age, I contended with countless setbacks, but the vitality placed on our income at home was the leading factor to my family’s problems. I remember when my parents chose to buy me a new pair of running shoes over paying the electricity bill or when they stayed up all night making tamales to sell so they could afford to pay for medical bills. There never went a month without my parents constantly arguing over the monthly rent or not having enough to buy groceries for the family. I grew up with five siblings in addition to two cousins who were sent from Mexico by their parents and placed under the legal guardianship of my parents. Naturally, learning to adapt to unfortunate circumstances was not rare and I quickly understood
My personal and professional lives are undoubtedly interwoven, and have been affected by my independent emigration from my native Iran at the age of 17. I knew that my desire to pursue higher education would be better fulfilled abroad, so, with the support of my parents, I decided to move to France. After I gained a degree in French language there, I moved to Los Angeles with my eyes set firmly on graduate school. The linguistic, cultural, and financial difficulties I faced during these times have played a significant role in teaching me about independence, perseverance, and resilience. Additionally, my diverse exposure to three very different cultures and languages has allowed me to become more accepting of others who are dissimilar from me, and has made better capable at communicating effectively.
My parents are Hmong refugees that immigrated to the United States after the Vietnam War in the 1970s in search of a better life. In their eyes, America is the land of the free and where dreams can become reality. In Laos, my parents lived an agrarian lifestyle with very little education. Despite their lack of education, they realized that education held the key to success. Throughout my life, my parents emphasized the importance of education and did their best to guide my siblings and me. This was not an easy task for my parents because of the cultural adjustment that they experienced, but they managed to instill in me invaluable character qualities such as patience, perseverance, hard work, sacrifice and courage. I am the third youngest out of twelve children, and I will be the first to receive a Graduates degree.
A fire rose within to burn social economic barriers that imprisoned me from achieving an education. As a member of a low-income household, I continually witnessed my parents struggling to pay for utilities, rent, and groceries. Although we received government assistance, it never seemed to be enough. My father worked long hours at a dairy factory to provide for our family, but his addiction to alcohol took most of his income. My mother depended on government assistance due to her chronic asthma and arthritis. Not being able to rely on my parents for stability, my six older siblings were forced to drop out of high school to become providers of their own.
I was just a small town girl living in Grants, New Mexico. There is a saying that if you blink you will miss it driving down the highway. I was born and raised in Milan; it was just a little portion of Grants. My entire mom’s side of the family lived close by us and my dad’s side of the family was in Espanola, except for my grandma Yolie my dad’s mom. I grew up knowing almost everyone in that small town. The challenge in living in Grants was there were no available jobs. My parents had to drive back and forth to and from Albuquerque. As I was in kindergarten through second grade I would stay at my auntie’s house early in the morning or with my grandma while both my parents were in Albuquerque. Family was everything to me or at least what I
When I moved to this city I didn't think that I would be popular or the All-Star Quarterback for my school. We had to move here because of my dad's “business opportunity” that would give our family a lot more money. We were always struggling with money, that’s mostly why mom and dad fought a lot. I was always telling them “let me get a job and I could help”. But they always said “no you are too young and this doesn't concern you.
My parents came to the U.S. with nothing but the money in their pockets. We lived with my three aunts for a year, until my father could figure what to do. He decided to start a convenience store to try to provide for his family. He was not making as much as he was in Korea, but he had to make do with what he had. Due to this lack of income, I had to attend four different elementary schools: one in Korea, two in Baltimore County, and one in Howard County. Even though two of them were in Baltimore County, I still could not maintain my friendships because I could not drive, and my parents had to work all the
When I was nine, my parents divorced and my dad moved back to his hometown. When I was 11, my mom moved my family out of our hometown to Frederick, Maryland. My mom was a single, working mom, and I was often left responsible for my three younger siblings. For the past 6 years, I have been cooking meals, checking homework, and cleaning up after my siblings.
Home school had proven to be a waste of my time. I found out about Job Corps through a couple of friends who had attended the school. I decided to go to the Brunswick Job Corps. I spent 10 months there. I would like to say that I used all that time wisely, Of course not. It wasn’t till month seven that I started buckling down and finally got my General Education Diploma (GED). My life has now begun to go in the right direction. I came back home. My mother worked for Delta at the time so my mother, father, and I took a trip to Hong Kong, China, a business trip for my mother, an educational trip for me, and for my father it was a stroll down memory lane. My father spent some time in the city of Hong Kong when he was nineteen, and he got to show me around the city when I was nineteen. Of course for myself, once we crossed the International Date Line on the way there I was of age to
There are some vaccines that children are required to get. Should parents have a choice about it though? Some people will argue that parents should have a right to say if their child gets vaccinated or not. Others will argue that vaccines are necessary. I believe that parents should not have a choice about vaccinations, and that they should be given to every child.
I am appreciative of the cultural interactions provided by my college experience as I feel well-equipped for working with diversity in my future profession as a nurse. In particular, I am thankful for the opportunity I have had this semester to not only get to know a fellow nursing student from Nigeria, but I am privileged to now call her a dear friend.
My first real memories are from La Monte, a rural town in central Missouri, walled in on all sides by cornfields with a bank, school, and city hall being the only buildings not beginning to cave in. An Army Reservist turned pastor, my dad brought my family here to take up a preaching position shortly after my birth. I was unaware at the time, because of my young age, the financial arrears my parents drowned in. With my father working two jobs in addition to his preaching career, a trip to the local waffle house was often the only outing my family could find the money for. Unable to afford a daily commute to the next district, I was sent to the hundred-person school up the road.
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.
Life expectancy estimates the equivalent years in full health that a person can expect to live on the basis of the current mortality rates and prevalence distribution of health states in the population (W.H.O 2012). It has increased in the west; however, the same cannot be said for developing countries due to increase in diseases such as HIV/AIDS. This essay will look at the main causes of these problems and give possible solutions, taking Nigeria as a case study, where life expectancy is 52 years with a rank of 182 out of 194 nations (WORLD HEALTH REPORT 2000). It will conclude by arguing that media and government need to take a more active approach to tackle these problems in developing countries.
When managing an organization and making decision, it is important to develop leadership skills. Leadership is multi-faceted and there are many different approaches that are used in leadership. What is leadership? Leadership is the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of a vision or a set of goals. (Robbins & Judge p. 385) Leaders are those who have the influence to motivate people to take a vision and put it into action. Often, people in management have assumed positions of leadership, meaning because of the nature of their position, they will have to make leadership decisions and influence those they lead toward a goal or vision.