Personal Narrative: My Everlasting Quest

Raced down the basketball court. As soon as we reached the basketball goal. I did a really quick move called the hop step. With a reverse layup at the end. After that I looked at the coaches and they looked down at their papers and called me over.

Sophomore year I was playing at a soccer tournament with my old team. I was playing a great game even though the score was not reflecting my hard work. Towards the end of the game I jumped up caught the ball landed, my body went one way and my legs went the other, then I fell to the ground. Everyone around me had heard a pop, I knew it was my ACL. From this moment in my soccer career I knew I needed to be determined and to be focused on my recovery in order to get back out there.

I have not been able to participate in athletics nearly as much as I would have liked. I started running track in the spring of my seventh grade year. I performed surprisingly well and decided to participate in cross country the next fall. I spent the summer training and preparing for the season, and it definitely showed. I ran in the varsity race for my first cross country meet ever.

An outsider: a person who does not belong. I stepped onto the chilly, uninviting plane with a sparkle of hope and adventure in my eyes. I was flying in an enormous plane to go on a gruesome eighteen hour flight. At first sight, every single person shot at us, not because we were flying a plane. But, because we were eight American- Russians, with expensive handbags and drew the most attention to ourselves with four carry- on suitcases because of the two week long trip. The trip started a couple days after school ended, when everyone was enjoying the amazing freedom of summer, I was stuck on a large, yet claustrophobic vessil.As I stood up from the luxurious business class, my legs stgarted to tingle with excitement. Well that, or I have been

During my final year of Cross Country around Regionals at Oglethorpe, I ran my final race for my high school career. Banks County was nearly number one in the State, the furthest we had ever ranked in history, and spirit and hopes for State Championship were high. I was nervous, like nobody’s business, I had messed up during my senior night because I was upset for my parents for not showing up and escorting me. And I was scared that I was going to do horribly. But as I ran, I realized that if I let my past mistakes and failures hold me back or get in my way, so I ran, harder and better than I ever had before and apparently even beat a “skinny kid”.

I attended preschool in Korea and first grade in America. I started to speak fluently in English by second grade, so I wasn’t put into another ELD class. My mom attended an English learning class to try to learn English. My parents were gradually learning English, little by little. But then again.

Unable to straighten my leg I became very panicked but my coach assured me that I would be ok. Little did he know that it was going to be a life altering injury. The next day I went to my doctor’s office to get my knee checked out (I was still worried because my knee was still

After years of practice, I progressed in the sport and joined my high school team. Initially, running track was a way of escaping the stress from my parents’ divorce. It taught me to endure more pain than I could have ever imagined. With each grueling stride, my mind would fight my aching body to quit. However, I would always find a way to stay determined and keep pushing forward.

When I was eleven years old, I tore my anterior cruciate ligament, more commonly known as the ACL while playing in a football game. Being only eleven years old, this was a pretty unusual injury as most ACL tears do not happen until mid to later teens. Hearing that I tore my ACL was pretty devastating. I did not know much about it, but I knew enough to know I would be out of sports for a long time. The next nine months of my life were spent with one goal in mind: getting back to sports.

To be more specific it started in practice on my sixteenth birthday. We were showing off our competition kick dance routine that we would perform at every competition, when I came down from a leap that I have been doing since I was thirteen years old. I tore a major ligament in my need called the Anterior Cruciate Ligament or ACL. When I fell in the middle of the dance routine I knew that what had happened was not a normal knee injury like I have had before. When my other teammates stopped dancing my coach, Coach Vavra, came up to me to tell me that I could have gotten back in the dance and kept dancing.

It took me so long to try and find where I fit and belong. I now know that my identity is something unique and individual and any person growing up, with or without immigrant parents, struggle to find

All I could think about was not getting to run this season with the people I loved. Not running also meant, I would not be able to improve for the next year. I also had a chance to be on Varsity, but this ruined it. My teammates were texting me and asking how I was doing. It was then when I had to break the news that I would be out for the

Later that day when it was my turn to show the coaches what I could do, I really pushed myself to the best that I could possibly do. Then I went out into the gym with the rest of the people that had tried out. About 15 minutes later the coaches called us all back into the auditorium and started calling names of who had made the team and, then my name was finally called and I was super excited! After the season was over (volleyball and football) we had a big party, then everybody left when the year was over, and I started eighth grade they announced that they were having cheer tryouts I tried out and of course gave it my all and made the team

Overcoming “The” Struggle I don’t recall having a hard time learning how to read. It was one of those things that just came easily to me for some reason. For the most part I enjoyed reading as well. The only time I didn’t enjoy reading was when I didn’t understand a certain word or a certain phrase.

I have been doing some thinking about our conversation a few days ago and have concluded that I will take you up on the offer! I just sold my old bike and now have some money left over that I can use to pay for those seminars. I am going to see how soon I can get this done, I am going to look at the dates and send my form in.