My Life Experience

For the majority of my life, I had been shy, even though it didn’t seem like it most of the time, I was scared to death when I met new people. I know that it sounds extremely trivial, but I feel that when you first meet someone, you’re ultimately giving them their first impression of yourself and that is a lot of pressure. It seemed almost certain that I would lead a life of being a social wallflower until March 2017, more specifically, March 28th, 2017. This day was and still is important to me because I learned how to be confident, and through my experience, it taught me something that I will hold onto forever. Prior to this day, I was an extremely introverted person and rarely went out of my way to make friends. As a volunteer at day

I am ordinary. I have lived in amongst poverty and on the edges of war, but I am ordinary. But let me sit you down and share some extraordinary things that I feel have happened in my life.

Starting in my eleventh-grade year of high school, I never knew all the changes I would experience. I attended Chickasaw High School in Chickasaw, AL. It was a little school, which had about five hundred students in total. I did not live in Chickasaw like all the other kids. I lived about twenty minutes away in Mobile, AL with my dad and stepmom. I went to this school because my stepmom (LaRae) was a teacher there. Also, I was like most girls in high school, I had a high school sweetheart named Michael Matthews. I thought my eleventh-grade year of high school was going to be a great and memorable experience until I found out some horrible news.

My life was perfect, I got along with my siblings, my mom and I were close… Well then there’s my dad. We were always really close, he and I would go out to the barn together at the old house and he would speak to me as if I were the audience. We always enjoyed each other's company until one day he started acting strange, and then stranger, and then even stranger until the point where my mom found him in the middle of the night standing in a parking lot in his pajamas. She eventually left him… I don’t blame her, I mean he wouldn’t get help.

Not many people can say their biggest life lesson was taught by a bus. On October 23, 2015 I was shown to never take my life for granted. Lakeside Rams football was ready to face Dequeen for the chance to win a conference championship. The intensity of game day was electrifying even though it was a humid, sultry, and rainy day we loaded the buses with our earphones in preparing ourselves for the night ahead.

It was a dark and perspiring night as the wind was breezing on my face. My parents and I went to the entrance of the airport in Ethiopia. The date was September 15, 2017 and that day was the day that we were leaving Ethiopia. We had stayed there for one month for a vacation and to meet our other family members. We went at 7:30 pm and the flight was at 10:30. We went a bit early because it is better than being late. Also, if a problem insists, we would have time to fix it but that wouldn’t happen,...right? Honestly, I didn't think we would've gotten on the airplane that night because of that horrible incident. It was the most meaningful experience of my life because it made me surprised when I heard that our visa was expired. All this time we did not check that the visa stamp said that September 14 is the day were leaving in the month that we stayed there. We told the people who worked at the Immigration that we were leaving on September 15 but their mistake caused us to be a problem when we were about to leave Ethiopia. We had to be in a rush so we didn’t miss the airplane flight. For that reason, the life lesson that I learned is that managing your time is crucial when it comes for many reasons. We came a little early so would get the process before the flight done and if something happens, then we would have plenty of time to do something about it. If we didn't manage our time and we came later, we would probably miss our flight or we would've gotten really

July 3, 8 AM in the morning Woke up thinking that this camp is going to be amazing and it is going to be one of my most memorial times of my life. I got up and got ready to leave my home sweet home, I reached there and when I pulled up in the schools parking lot it was kind of awkward. When I reached their everybody was just watching me in the car but I shook it off because I thought that everybody probably had those moments, so I hopped off the car and loaded my luggage on the bus and stood there with my friends while my parents were talking and meeting with new people. At last it was the moment of Good Bye so I gave my parents a hug and got on the bus with my fellow friend Aarav, the bus ride was an hour and around 15 min. The bus ride was fun so we barely knew when time passed by and we reached our campus " Snively''. When we reached there we had to take our luggage and put it in the main hall, we were asked to take a seat on the couches and we found out our bunk mates in one room and with a coincidence I was in a room with everyone I wanted to be with. So we took our luggage and put it in our rooms, when we came back down the Councillors Jeremy and Savaugn took us on an adventure in the forest so we will be well familiar with the area. We had to walk on tight ropes with a partner on the other side then we had to take a rope than swing to the other side of the half which was super fun. The next adventure was we hall had to stand on a really huge seesaw and we had to

It was the summer of 15. Filled with travel, laughter, and smiles. But, at that time I didn’t pay attention or even cherish those moments. Now, I truly know how much I miss the feeling of being that happy all the time.

The house that built me was a two story, standard suburban number in a low income, minority neighborhood . It wasn’t ideal, there were a few instances of hate crimes against hispanics-it could have been me-, but I had a roof over my head and there was food on the table. 14 years of my life were spent in that house, I spent my days learning from my siblings as they went down the tumultuous road of life. Being the youngest, I followed the example established by my older siblings: stay out of trouble and focus on studying. I knew I would always have their support. They taught me that coming from a low socioeconomic background was not a limitation, but rather an advantage when it came to striving for greatness. Early on I learned that life is not a walk in a patch of roses, it’s an always changing highway with sharp turns and potholes-make the right decisions and you’ll get to your destination .

I tend to believe that my life has been fortunate compared to families in other places of the world, but also similar to many of those families. I was born in Hidalgo, Texas to a poor, low-income family. I lived in Reynosa, Mexico for the first four years of my life where I learned to speak Spanish and basic knowledge thanks to my mother. Since I was the first born, my parents have always been overprotective of me. When my sister was born in 2004, we moved to Pharr, Texas, where my parents built a house. My father worked long hours day after day to be able to provide for us while my mother took care of us and the house as a housewife.

As a nine year old girl, I didn’t think much about life and what the future held for me. I mostly thought about riding my pony, playing with my friends at school, and playing on my family’s farm. I didn't think much about how quickly my life could completely change at any minute.

I was born in the town called ‘Gang-Seo’ which is the western side of the river that passes through the capital of South Korea. I used to hang around with my friends at the small park that is located on the back side of the old white apartment complex where I lived. When I turned six years old, my family moved into the town called ‘Gang-Nam’ is the southern side of the river. The atmosphere was really different from where I had lived, since all of my new friends went to private institutions after school. I couldn’t communicate and play with my friends for a long time, since I didn’t go to those places. I felt lonely. I didn’t have much time to have a conversation in my home either, because my brother, who is seven years older than I, do always stayed outside until the late evening and my parents both worked at the time. But there was a person who made me smile sometimes: my grandmother. She used to tell me a lot of her old-time stories and play pranks on me, all the time such as making me try weird food which she improvised and answering my questions with annoying wordplay that I couldn’t understand. To me, she wasn’t just grandmother, also my best friend.

On one night, something terrifying has happened to me and my family, a scary experience that has taught us that life is too short and that anything can happen to anyone at any moment. These life experiences can be life changing along with reflecting. Reflection is the process we take to make meaning and learn from our experiences. This is a story that has definitely changed my viewpoint of life.

Throughout a person’s life, there can be many things, such as friends and family, education, or sports, that help them develop skills to turn them into the person they are today. Without these different skills, it can possibly lead to a lower standard of living, which is not what we strive for. The thing that helped me develop my unique skill set that I can use through the rest of my life, which is also my cultural artifact, is a football. Football has taught many different things that I am able to use during the rest of my college experience, and after that during my professional career. The different skills football has taught me is the value of friendship, self-motivation, and time management skills.

Some days you wake up and feel something is wrong, or you feel that something is going to go very right today. The date was september 4th, 2016. The day felt pretty normal, I got up, got dressed, ate breakfast and got ready for school. I go to my bus stop at 7:30 and right now it was 7:18. I decided to see how my fish was. I have an 60 gallon aquarium that held more than 50 fish. I gave them some more food and saw that my grandpa was going to put some decorations in the aquarium. When 7:30 hit I put on my shoes and walked to my bus stop. I had a good day at school, and I thought I was going to fail my science test. I actually I passed the test, I was so happy. My day was going pretty good until I went home.