Admissions Essay: To Fly Alone
"Dr. Johnson ... Dr. Johnson...." As I wearily walked down the artificially lit corridor, I realized it was my father's doctor being paged. I turned and ran towards the intensive care unit I had left a few minutes ago. The sterilized odor of the hospital overwhelmed me as I raced through a maze of white walls to confront his death.
After bolting through heavy metal doors, I saw doctors and nurses rushing frantically around the room. I could only hear one sound. It filled the air and was audible above all the commotion and the heavy pounding of my heart. The monotonous beep of the monitor meant Daddy was gone forever.
While sitting next to his cold body, I focused at the crimson drops, which stained the yellow linoleum floor and slowly remembered what a terrible ordeal the past six weeks of hospitalization had been. My Life had changed forever since the day I sped through traffic with my Dad shivering in the back seat next to my worried mother. I was scared to death without even knowing that the killer was Leukemia.
Although the chemotherapy proceeded well, it gradually wore my father away. The first side effects were a loss of appetite accompanied by nausea and vomiting. His hair fell out next, and I could tell my Father's courage was beginning to waver. A look of pain and anguish had replaced his usual smile and with each passing day he looked more like my grandfather. It all seemed like a bad dream.
While packing up hours after he had passed away, I found a note directed towards me. It was in Father's handwriting; blurry scribbles because the medicine made his hands shake. I sat down and cried because it said in Spanish, "My son, it is time for you to fly alone."
It is hard to understand Dad's absence, and that he left on my 17th birthday. Although I miss him everyday I am grateful for all the time we spent together and everything my father taught me. He pointed me in the right direction and made me believe in myself. There is good in this beautiful world, and life will always receive my best effort. I will never be embarrassed by my heritage and will succeed. I know he is proud of me.
The system in place is completely unsuitable and unhelpful for Native people and it shows just how indifferent Canada is to First Nations peoples’ well-being. Zimmerman explains in his article “Outcomes” that it is a well-known fact that Aboriginal people are overrepresented in the prison system (1992). There are so many reasons why this is so, and the majority of those reasons are because of the terrible way that Canada has interacted with them. They are isolated in their reserves, they are haunted by their residential school experiences, leading to alcoholism, domestic violence and neglect, and they face discrimination and a lack of social support from the government. Once an Aboriginal person finds themselves in the clutches of the prison system, the indifference begins. Canada’s criminal justice system is indifferent to an Aboriginal person’s cultural, spiritual, and individual needs that separate them from the average convicted person (Zimmerman, 1992). The criminal justice system ignores the unique idea of justice and restoration that First Nations peoples have, making it extremely irrelevant and unhelpful for them. First Nations peoples have linguistic and cultural barriers and a lack of counsel and understanding of the criminal processes and, therefore, have misguided rulings and inaccurate proceedings. Canada has not provided the cultural training and
Takayuki watched helplessly from outside the surgery. Anguished. Relentlessly he beat against the cold steel door. Why did you have to leave me? Bursting into tears, the orphan’s body began to spasm violently with each powerful sob. The surgeons looked on helplessly…
Hulbert, M. A. (2011). Pursuing justice: An introduction to justice studies. Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing.
I am writing this to you on the anniversary of my father's passing, out of a deep concern for your future. My desire is that, by reading this, you may avoid some of the pain that my generation has experienced. Many things have come and gone in my lifetime, for God has granted me a long 60 years. I wish to tell you all that I have experienced, before I too pass on, that you may learn from the mistakes of the past, and that our losses may not be in vain.
Love has been expressed since the beginning of time; since Adam and Eve. Each culture expresses its love in its own special way. Though out history, though, it’s aspect has always been the same. Love has been a major characteristic of literature also. One of the most famous works in literary history is, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. This story deals with the love of a man and a woman who’s families have been sworn enemies. There love surpassed the hatred in which the families endured for generations. In the end they both ended up killing their selves, for one could not live without the other. This story is a perfect example of true love.
For the past 500 years the native inhabitants of this land have lived a legacy amongst and became subordinates to the European colonialists. They have had to adhere to stipulations that did not translate into their way of understanding and life ethos, and were misinterpreted. “The misunderstanding of my ancestors at treaty was linguistic and conceptual. We did not understand your language or your concepts of property” (Johnson 2007:41). The legacy consists of poverty, powerlessness, and the breakdown of social cohesion that plague so many Aboriginal families and communities. These conditions did not come about by chance or failure to modernize. They were created by past policies that systematically dispossessed Aboriginal people of their lands and economic resources, their cultures and languages, and the social and political institutions through which they took care of their own (Brant-Castellano 2001:5). Due to colonial and imperial impositions the majority of Canada’s Indigenous population is amongst the most highly excluded, poverty stricken, oppressed, and disadvantaged groups. Within the past half century, Aboriginal peoples have been relentless and determined in their struggle to attain self-determination, maintain their treaty rights and dispute rightful control of land possession matters. By means of mobilization and resistance movements they have contested and are challenging the policies that originated with colonialism and continue with government policies of the present day. The following essay will begin with a timeline of significant dates in the history of colonial and present day policy and law making that governing powers have applied and imposed on First Nation populations. A portion of the paper will cover a h...
The concept of restorative justice was heavily shaped by the work of John Braithwaite (1989) who in turn was inspired by indigenous practices in New Zealand and Australia, whereby the significance of family value...
“Get the doc now!” Mother shrieked. Bump, crash, bang, the stretcher carried my lifeless body down a populous hall. “Get and I-V now! Heart beats are slowing, we may need resuscitation, get me the shocks now!” “Oh my lord, no please don’t take my boy lord! Not now…” My mom snuffled. *Whimpers and cries”
You could tell just by the atmosphere in the hallways that there had been a tragedy. There was silence as we took the elevator up as if the elevator even knew that something tragic had happened. As we walked out of the elevator, though things suddenly became even harder. There were murmurs and tears. Tissues and empty food boxes littered the floor as if the janitors had not cleaned in days when in reality it had only been since the time of the accident yesterday. There was family everywhere, but they all looked lost. Like when you see a duckling looking for its mother and it just can’t seem to operate unless it has its siblings and mom. That’s what my family looked like. We were lost. My uncle met us as soon as we walked off the elevator and sadly enough the first thing he did was hug my mother and through tears apologized for the death of Varity, “I’m so sorry, I never even saw the car. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me”. He then continued to apologize and told her that he tried to save my middle cousin. He said that he did CPR until the ambulance got there and to please forgive him. My uncle blamed himself since he was the one driving when the accident occurred. There was no possible way that my uncle could have prevented the accident. He looked left and right, but the road was hilly and the sun was setting just right that he never saw the truck coming. Their car was
It felt so dragged out because all I wanted was to see him and tell him the news. Our connection felt different, phone calls were made shorter and they weren’t as frequent. I missed him. Two nights had gone by without a phone call or even a message. This wasn’t typical of Luke. I was becoming increasingly worried. I tried to distract myself from the situation and went to Atlanta to visit my parent’s for the weekend. This provided a distraction from my despair. When I arrived home, the flat fell silent. I sat aimlessly on the sofa, starring at the telephone, hoping that maybe it would ring. I tried turning my television on but I was oblivious to anything around me. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I knew something was wrong. Fifty-five minutes passed, as I stared at the phone. That was when I heard it
In his sleep he could hear voices screaming at the back of the plane and then an announcement if there was a doctor on board. He waited five minutes until another announcement came and by this time he could tell it was a ladies voice that was screaming. He gets up from his seat and looks for the airhostess to let her know that he is a doctor and can he help. As he got closer and closer he knew that she was very pregnant and about to have a baby. John had never felt himself panic before, he was now not going to be a heart surgeon but instead was going to be a doctor who was going to have to deliver a baby.
I recently read an article somewhere, in which BBC journalist Sigrun Rottman said that objectivity in journalism is an illusion and the media should think more of being balanced than being objective. According to her, objectivity in the media does not really exist. This hit home for me because before being a journalism student I believed that objectivity in journalism was undoubtedly the focal point of the profession and that the business of every journalist was to be objective. The truth and the reality of this belief as we know it and as I have come to understand is that objectivity in journalism really doesn’t exist or to put it in better terms, it doesn’t exist to the extent that we perceive it should. So, the oft-stated and exceedingly desired goal of modern journalism is objectivity - the ‘disconnected’ gathering and dissemination of news and information; this allows people to arrive at decisions about the world and events occurring in it without the journalist’s subjective views influencing the acceptance and/or rejection of the information. It’s a pity that such a goal is impossible to achieve! As long as humans gather and disseminate news and information, objectivity is an unrealizable dream.
My father, brother, a couple family friends, and I had trekked up to New Hampshire for an exciting weekend. On one trip down from the summit, there was an enormous ski jump and my father decided to race down it and fly off the end. My initial awe and impressed attitude quickly disappeared as he landed with an enormous thud on his side. His face was as white as the snow surrounding him and he could barely hold in the screams of pain. He had dislocated his shoulder and thankfully, the local ski rescue team was able to help him recover. However, for the next few months, he had severe difficulty moving his arm and could not complete any physical activity. I had never seen him more fragile and I was reminded of how many times he had taken care of me when I was hurt or comforted him after a
Love is not a god as the fine philosophers of Greece once suggested. Love is something far more powerful and universal, for not all people believe in gods, yet people cannot refuse the existence of love. Instead, love is a condition of the human body that cannot be denied. True love is obstinate; in the way that music pours into the ears of an audience, love pouring into the heart of a man cannot be stopped, denied, or set off course. Love is a natural instinct. You cannot artificially make love where there is none or where it does not belong. Yet, the condition of being in love grows independent of all rationale. It grows places where an observer may not understand its existence. Attempting to fight love in such a situation leaves even powerful and noble families, such as the Capulets and Montagues, suddenly powerless. When love takes control of two souls, it takes the lovers on a journey. The journey is the growth of love throughout its many progressive stages. In this way, the growth of love between two people is analogous to the growth and development of a painted masterpiece. A work of art and a bond of love both have distinct stages and characteristics. A painting initially begins with a vision in the mind of the artist. This vision is a perfect vision that the artist will strive to replicate on her canvas. Similarly, love often begins on a visual level based on the physical attractions between two people. The vision of the painter is soon transformed into quick, loose sketches. The pencil freely marks the page; the artist has no control over where it goes, he merely paints. Similarly, lovers have no control over their new feeling of love that has taken over their bodies and rendered them helpless. After an artist has loos...