Personal Narrative: A Child Before Temple University

If you want to know the value of a second, ask a hopeful right before sign drop. Drill team girls from all over Texas and even out of state have high hopes of becoming part of the future line of The Kilgore College Rangerettes. Every year the competition gets tougher and the girls hoping for a spot on the prestigious drill team are becoming more competitive and stronger dancers. I was one of these girls who decided to take a chance and endure a week long audition and hope to see my tryout number on the sign in Dodson Auditorium on July 17, 2015. Unfortunately, I was not one of the girls chosen for the 76th line of Rangerettes. Because of this I grew in a much different way, and I now see that timing is everything.

A disturbance in a Tuesday morning routine was a change of a lifetime: my brief car-ride nap was interrupted by a crash, then, the jarring of the ambulance. It was an unexpected awakening. Sixth grade social studies and spelling tests had to be put aside, as the rest of my day would be filled with the beeps of machines and chatter of scrub-clad trauma nurses. Suddenly, my mind was back in my body - and my first conscious words were my complaints of the uncomfortable neck brace, followed by my request to remove it. The nurses exchanged concerned looks. I would see those same eyes in my aunt when she visited me in the ICU, but the difference is that one look was worried for possible neck injury, and the latter was telling the news of my father’s death.

During the fall of my senior year of high school, I sent out an application to Bates College for their undergraduate program in Biochemistry. For reasons unknown to me, they denied my application. I instead began my college career at Central Maine Community College. This lead to my eventual application as a transfer student to Cornell University. Events like these in my life helped shape my life. I am who I am because of the different events that connected the people around me. Who am I? I am

If I had one operating philosophy about life, it is this: “Be cool to the pizza delivery dude; it’s good luck.” This quote supplied by Sarah Adams, not only reflects upon the simplistic aspects of life, but also contradicts the overall mindset that consumes our society today.  This essay, with its strong use of civic virtues, gave me as the reader, a new look into how I live my everyday life and how I tend to deal with the situations I have at hand. In the essay, “Be Cool to the Pizza Dude” by Sarah Adams, the use of ongoing kindness and compassion provides insight into the value of human life, that connected with me through an intellectual, emotional, and personal standpoint.

In life, you can go through a lot but only a few people actually can bounce back. In High School I’ve gone through many trials and tribulations to get to the point I’m at now. I’ve been held to high standards based on the classes I’ve taken. My Honors classes built the foundation for me to start challenging myself and kill the procrastination problem I possessed in my young academic career. The Honors classes prepared me for the Advanced Placement classes that were offered. My junior year I took on the challenge by taking Language and Composition then also taking United States History. That gave me the confidence to double my load with adding on 2 more AP classes to my schedule which is a challenge but I think there’s much worse than four AP classes. As you go you learn that if you set your mind on doing a certain thing anything is possible to overcome.

The pain and agony due to the fact that I might not be prepared for college class was on my shoulders. Since day one of highschool, my biggest desire throughout school was to be engaged in learning while being well prepared for the next step in life: college. What class was the answer to this class desired? It was in a meeting with my guidance counselor in eighth grade that struck me and sparked the interest in my heart to do well. All of my highschool career I have never known what it actually meant to do well and be ¨successful.¨ The abstract idea occurred to me, in room 201, in the front row of Dual Enrollment English 111; this idea regarded what it means to be successful and obtain a good work ethic while producing a high quality essay.

It was difficult getting to where I am currently with trying to understand who I was? And who I am? Why I was going through what I was going through? How to understand and interpret what felt almost alien. It wasn’t until after getting into the University of South Carolina as a Biology major that I knew that that wasn’t what I was meant to be doing. But before I realized that wasn’t for me, I looked into, after undergrad and medical school, becoming a neonatal physician and again the more I thought about it the less confident I was going that route. What I did know was that while I may not have wanted to work in that specific profession, I did want to work with children, families, women and girls, and the underprivileged. So after taking the

As I end my sophomore year at Old Dominion University I think about all that I have accomplished in the past two years. I think about traveling to Peru and volunteering at an Hogar and Hospital as a Freshmen, Becoming Co-President of the Women’s ministry for ODU’s Catholic Campus Ministry, and to working hard and receiving good grades in all my classes. Not only do I think about all the work that I have done so far but I also think about my family and all the sacrifices they have made for me. I think about my parents waking up early every day to go to work just so we could have food on the table and a roof over our heads. I think about all they had to sacrifice when they fled from their country just so my siblings and I could grow up with more opportunities, and accomplish any goals we set ourselves without having to worry about whether or not tomorrow would come.

My proudest achievement would be getting into Cumberland International Early College and making it oy my

I’ll never forget how I felt the first time I walked into Prairie Ridge High School. I was surrounded by approximately sixteen hundred other students and I knew exactly none of them. I had never been that alone before and when I walked through the cafeteria doors, I felt the first seed of doubt that maybe I should have stayed in Union, with my mom. At that moment, I wanted to turn around and run out of Prairie Ridge, hop in the car, and drive the four hundred miles back to my friends, my teammates, and the majority of my family. Instead, I took a deep breath and sat down.

All my 8th grade classmates and I sit on the cafeteria floor at Daniel Wright Middle School, giggling and staring at the gigantic screen. A slideshow plays. Often mortifying pictures of our younger selves appear with our names. I recollect all the vivid memories from middle school and earlier, like when my 5th grade teacher accidentally threw a snowball at one of my classmates. My friends and I sit together, hollering when we see each other on the screen. The end of our middle school days.

Please reflect on what you consider to be an important personal experience related to your talents, interests, or commitments. Using this experience, please tell us what you learned about yourself. How will this experience prepare you for success at Rutgers?

14 years have passed since I took my first steps into kindergarten. Back then, everything was all fun and games. Who would have known that time would fly as fast as the speed of light. In a blink of an eye, here I am now, writing an essay for my college application. Different ideas and thoughts popped up in my head, including the cliche introduction that I presented. Many of them I thought were good, yet there was not much to write about. Honestly, recalling and writing about an event that changed my life is not an easy task. There had been so much that have happened, and in a way or another, my life was changed for either the best or the worst. Desperate as I could ever be, I started looking into my drawers to find anything that might spark a memory. Then there was this blue round neck shirt that I found. Suddenly I remembered the events where I wore that shirt. First was a birthday party of a close friend, second was a sleepover at a relative 's place, so on and so forth. But then I ended up staring in midair for quite awhile. I recalled wearing this shirt during a school interaction. Weird as it may sound, that one significant day, changed my life. Not as a student, an adolescent, but as a man.

“College is a great experience and exposes you to a lot of things you might not otherwise learn or experience. You learn to evaluate things, think for yourself, and become a more independent person,” says Steven D. Woodhull on quote garden.com. The experiences at the Divine Word University are far more different compared to Jubilee Catholic Secondary school. Divine Word is a level up. The level of teaching, learning, understanding, and the level of maturity is a step higher compared to secondary life.

After reviewing my Future Me letter, it was encouraging to see how much I grew in general. From my work in essays and responses and how I felt mentally from where I was when I wrote this letter. I have felt a growth in these past few months. I came into the semester unsure of my critical thinking and unable to get deeper into the subject feeling like I hit a wall with my chisel that is dull and unable to chip away the wall. After the feedback from Cynthia for my responses and essays, I have more confidence in skills as I convinced myself that I was a better storyteller than an essay writer. I may still believe that, but I don’t believe I am as bad as I thought I was with my essay writing and that I am capable to write a good essay. I have been