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Success and perseverance essay
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Success and perseverance essay
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Being the wild child that I am, I refused to wear shoes. To get to the lake or canal at my grandmother’s house, I would have to walk down a road, and in Texas during the summertime, the road was incredibly hot. So without shoes, my feet would get burned, and after I mastered the barefoot run a little more, I figured out that if I ran as fast as I could to the shaded spots, wait there until my feet cooled, and then run as fast as I could to another shaded spot, my feet would be relatively unscathed. And that’s life. Life is the rough road that will burn your feet, and the shaded spot are the little bits of happiness we keep finding, and keep looking for. Everyone has their own desires and goals they want to accomplish in life, and mine is simply to be happy.
I attend The Science Academy of South Texas (SciTech), a school very diverse in ethnicity, religion, teaching methods, and personality. It is a small magnet school, my senior class being only 143 students, so I’ve had the privilege to know each kid in my class very well over these four years. The education and life lessons it has provided me with has helped mold me into the person I am today, and the person I want to be in the future. I learned from students at this school who emigrated from places such as Russia, Africa, Iran, people who had hard lives, who lived through hard experiences. I used to feel uncomfortable around my friends who have been through a lot because I’ve had the easiest life imaginable. I used to feel ashamed, and when I told them that, they agreed that I do live and easy American life, but that I shouldn’t be ashamed of it. Instead of being ashamed, I should take all the privilege I’ve had, all the education, and all the skills I was lucky to be given a chance to develop and give back to the world. They taught me there is so much more to this life we live and it is possible to use all this good fortune I have been given to make a difference. To make a difference in just one person’s life, may it be microscopic or significant, is what I hope to do with my career.
As Pollock states, “Equity efforts treat all young people as equally and infinitely valuable” (202). This book has made me realize that first and foremost: We must get to know each of our students on a personal level. Every student has been shaped by their own personal life experiences. We must take this into consideration for all situations. In life, I have learned that there is a reason why people act the way that they do. When people seem to have a “chip on their shoulder”, they have usually faced many hardships in life. “The goal of all such questions is deeper learning about real, respected lives: to encourage educators to learn more about (and build on) young people’s experiences in various communities, to consider their own such experiences, to avoid any premature assumptions about a young person’s “cultural practices,” and to consider their own reactions to young people as extremely consequential.” (3995) was also another excerpt from the book that was extremely powerful for me. Everyone wants to be heard and understood. I feel that I owe it to each of my students to know their stories and help them navigate through the hard times. On the other hand, even though a student seems like he/she has it all together, I shouldn’t just assume that they do. I must be sure that these students are receiving the attention and tools needed to succeed,
When I was a young girl, my older brother always did very well in school and he and the rest of our family were always very proud of his work. As I grew older and noticed all of my brother’s achievements I decided that I wanted to not only achieve what he had, but to also achieve things that he had not. Because of this strive to reach and surpass the standards that my brother had set, I developed into a person with great determination. Throughout my life I have always set goals for myself and then did everything I could in order to meet those goals. This aspect of determination in my personality has allowed me to get to where I am today, a student of George Mason University. Whenever I am faced with an obstacle, such as a hard class, I make
I come from a magnet school that is blessed to have a large number of extremely bright students that are very dedicated to their studies, a must because of the difficult curriculum involved. The community is a very strong one with many of the students going on to do great things, which has given me the inspiration to believe that I can do whatever I want in life, as I see others who are well on their way. Within this community, I have been able to form strong bonds with other students who have similar interests and ambitions. We are able to push each other to learn new things and, through a mix of competition and collaboration, are able to truly progress in many ways, pursuing excellence in both our scholastic and extracurricular endeavors. I believe this has made me a better person, inspiring me to take on a more demanding schedule and to help others when they struggle, because they help me as well. These friendships have also encouraged me to dream big, as others around me are doing, inspiring me to apply to highly selective schools and believing that I will do something to
Overall the metaphor “Pave the Planet or Wear Shoes” provides a decision that the world needs to make in order for it to limit the economic problems within our society as a whole. Paving the planet has proven to be beneficial for only a small group of the population. The “wearing shoes” method will promote for a more socially just society as well preserving the biosphere for future generations to come.
If someone was to ask me two years ago what I wanted to be I would have greeted them with silence. Before I was a very anti-social person and I didn’t really like speaking much in front of a public, audience, or even my small group of friends. I was the type of girl who preferred staying home in the weekends and watch Netflix instead of going out. But everything changed when I went on a missionary trip with my church to Mexicali. The church I attend has a group of volunteers who go every 2-3 months on the weekends to Mexicali. In these trips we distribute clothes, food, essentials, toys, and candies for all the kids and people in Mexico that live in poverty. Many people who live there live in harsh conditions and are struggling to provide a home for their families. My first trip was a life changing experience because it changed the person who I was. I became an active and outgoing person. I became to appreciate and value the possessions I have at home. Every time I see the kids at Mexicali content when they receive a pair of shoes or a piece sandwich it makes me pleased of myself because I’m able to help them with what I can. Throughout these series of trips I discover my passion and how I have a soft spot for kids. Since Mexicali and where I live have a very large driving distance and I can’t go every day I also volunteer to help kids and adults around my community also. I have help
Never being one of those kids that had many friends seemed like a challenge; I have always felt like I had all I needed. For me, it’s special, that the people who I consider my friends, know so much about me. This past summer, I traveled to the place that gave birth to me, the Dominican Republic, where I was put in an environment where I had no prior knowledge of the people who I was going to encounter doing the things that I was interested in doing, like community service and traveling to certain parts of the country that I had never visited before. Being able to bond with the individuals from my trip while working on mountainsides, digging ditches to help install Black Water Treatments that would help a local community, participating in beach cleanups that belonged to a national park, made me feel that I was growing and expanding my horizons on what I could make a reality.
Being in a school that brought students from various counties and cities with different backgrounds, beliefs, and perspectives, opened my eyes to seeing just how diverse humanity is. In a time when everyone is struggling with personal problems, I know how monumental a simple volunteer act can be. One of my favorite acts of service is tutoring. I tutored an elementary-aged girl for two years in Fort Lee and I will always remember those two years as the most fulfilling. Education is so precious, and children are the most open to it. Not only was I able to teach her math and reading comprehension skills, but how to carry herself as a smart and extraordinarily capable young lady. In return, she taught me patience and how sometimes you just need to approach a problem differently to see the
I am very blessed to be able to attend Oakleaf High School, it is a modern and technologically advanced high school and any outsider who walks in can immediately tell that the teachers really do strive to see us students succeed. In my junior year, a fellow student came into the classroom and handed a few students a rolled up piece of paper that resembled a scroll. It piqued my interest because something like this never happens. She placed the last scroll in her hand on my desk and quickly spoke up, "This one is for you," I opened and read it immediately, it was an invitation to join the National Science Honor Society. I was elated at the chance to join something that meant a lot to me. I had always been interested in the STEM fields, even before they started being
This poem by Robert Frost was first read to me in the last year of my high school experience. Back then, not only did I have absolutely no interest in any literary work, but moreover, had no intension to lye there and analyze a poem into its symbolic definitions. Only now have I been taught the proper way to read a literary work as a formalistic critic might read. With this new approach to literature I can understand the underlying meaning to Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken". In addition to merely grasping the author's intension, I was able to justly incur that this poem, without directly mentioning anything about life's decisions, is in its entirety about just that.
There have been tons of things that I have learned and been taught in my life, by a number of people such as family, teachers, or even friends on occasion. The things they taught me vary from math and other related subjects to just some truly simple yet meaningful life lessons. However, there is nothing quite as unique, quite as special as a person teaching themselves a life lesson. It really is an amazing accomplishment for a person to teach themselves something. It is not quite as simple as another person teaching them something because it is not just the transferring of information from one person to another. The person instead has to start from scratch and process the information they have in their mind in order to come up with a new thought
I never really thought about where my life was going. I always believed life took me where I wanted to go, I never thought that I was the one who took myself were I wanted to go. Once I entered high school I changed the way I thought. This is why I chose to go to college. I believe that college will give me the keys to unlock the doors of life. This way I can choose for myself where I go instead of someone choosing for me.
I spent most of my time in a first grade classroom. In this classroom I observed the children as well as the teacher and paraprofessional. This classroom had children with special needs and that is why there was a paraprofessional in the classroom for half the day. What I observed in this classroom was how children with special need should be handle and taught. The teachers in this room loves her job and each student in her class. While in the classroom the teacher allowed me to help with children with their work, read to them and help them with anything else that they needed. During this field experience I got to give back to not only a school, but to a community that is very near and dear to my heart. I hope that I touched each student in a special way, because the students that I got the opportunity to help learn touched my
I have a very fulfilling feeling about what I have been able to accomplish in my life so far. I want the absolute best for myself and those close to me. I often go above and beyond to help those around me succeed and be the best version of themselves that they can possibly be.
My educational journey has been like a roller coaster. I have been in the worst spot of my life time. Where I hate going to school but, also think about my father education. My career goal is one of my most important in my life to better myself than I am today tomorrow I will better than yesterdays.
I often think of Robert Frost’s phrase, “I took the road less traveled by” when brushing against dirt, rocks, or grass on a trail. While following a single stretch of a path, whether that road leads in a curve or in a straight line, I notice a myriad of branches to trails that I normally classify as detours. Is that what Robert Frost means when he says he traveled a road less traveled by others?