I was in 8th grade and it was the beginning of Christmas vacation. I get out of school for the start of my break. My mindset was that it was going to be a great vacation, away from school, I would be able to sleep in, and the best thing about it Christmas itself. Then I finally get home all ecstatic for the break to finally beginning. Within 5 minutes of being home I get a phone call from my mom that was hard to take in and ruined that vacation for me. My cousin Cjay was diagnosed with a rare form of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma called Gray Zone. This news broke me. Never in my life have I ever been so distraught. Nothing after that phone call was the same for the rest of the school year. I didn’t want to do anything with anyone. I stayed inside all the time doing nothing. Not even Christmas was the same. Cjay was in the hospital during Christmas which made it seem like I, along with the rest of the family, didn’t even have one. And then one day it hit me, “What if he doesn’t survive this?”. This fun and outgoing kid, who was like a brother to me, no longer being alive made my whole view on this even worse. And things got really bad when it started …show more content…
When I came back from that dreadful vacation my grades started to plummet. I didn’t want to do any of the work causing me to start getting C’s and D’s. My mom and one of my teachers started to notice, so they made me talk to the guidance counsellor. I told the counsellor what was happening and the reason for my grades dropping. She didn’t help much except for one thing she told me “Once he gets through this everything will go back to normal.” I knew she was right, he would get through it and everything would be back to normal. I just had to have faith. And it worked. Instead of looking at all the negative parts of this situation I would look at the positive ones. This caused my grades to go back up, and I started doing the things that I enjoyed
Dialogue and characterization are effectively employed by Ruta Sepetys to create a forced atmosphere where choices are limited. Told from the perspective of an adolescent girl, Lina, the excerpt portrays a character who combats between appearance and her own ‘reality’ through her artistic expression. Her drawings are “very realistic” because she draws them based on her view of the world (Sepetys). In the ‘real world’, however, they appear to be rather unflattering and therefore, although she “longs to draw” it as she sees, she is forced to conform (Sepetys). In Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepetys, through the utilization of dialogue, imagery and characterization, conveys the contrast between reality and appearance in the protagonists’ artistic interpretations in order to convey the contextual setting of the novel.
The horrors of Hitler and the Holocaust are well known events during World War II, but many people don’t know that Stalin killed over 20 million people in the same time frame, either by murder or starving them to death in Siberian work camps. Between Shades of Gray uncovers the lost story of the millions of Lithuanian, Estonian, Latvian, and Finnish lives lost. The Baltic states annexation, the harsh conditions of Siberia, and the fearful lives they had to lead after being freed are wonderfully depicted in the novel.
Cancer is a deadly disease that millions of people die from a year. Many loved ones are killed with little to no warning affecting families across our world. My family happened to be one that was affected by this atrocious disease. This event changed the way my family members and I viewed cancer.
My father had fallen ill and was in the hospital for 2 weeks. Coming from a Latino family, I knew it was serious. Men don't go to the doctor unless they really feel like they're on their death bed. And this was my father's turn. But, he is not to blame for my failures because every night that he would call me, his first two questions were always "How was your day?" followed by "Did you do all your homework mija?" As always I told him yes when I really hadn't even opened my backpack. 2.32. The number that signified my first real academic failure. I blamed everyone and anything except for the real culprit. Finally, I realized that this was true all my own fault. If my father had died, I would've had to see him on his death bed knowing I got a 2.32. Yes, I know a 2.32 isn't failing, but the look of disappointment I got from him shattered my world. He told me I shouldn't let things get in my way, school is all I have going for me in my life. He was right. Although he still struggled with his health, I made it my #1 goal to never fall below a 3.0 GPA. I realize that my life doesn't revolve around a number, but it pained me to disappoint my
Multitudes of people were deported by the Soviets under the order of Josef Stalin during World War II, including Crimean Tatars and Lithuanians. One such example of the Soviet’s cruelty is depicted in the novel Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys: “He threw his burning cigarette onto our clean living room floor and ground it into the wood with his boot. We were about to become cigarettes” (5). Between Shades of Gray is narrated through the eyes of fifteen-year-old artist, Lina Vilkas. Soviet soldiers, known as the NKVD, take Lina and her family from Lithuania to labor in Siberian camps with little supplies and hope. As people around her die at the NKVD’s hands, she is forced to endure
One fateful day at the end of June in 1998 when I was spending some time at home; my mother came to me with the bad news: my parent's best friend, Tommy, had been diagnosed with brain cancer. He had been sick for some time and we all had anxiously been awaiting a prognosis. But none of us were ready for the bumpy roads that lay ahead: testing, surgery, chemotherapy, nausea, headaches, and fatigue. Even loud music would induce vomiting. He just felt all around lousy.
We found out on December 26, 2013, my family and I were in South Carolina visiting family for Christmas and we were about to take a new year’s trip to Florida. At that time we were living in Honduras and I was in 7th grade. I was just a normal kid who enjoyed life living in Honduras, going to a private school and playing tennis every day. Nothing horribly bad had really happened to me yet in my life. Finding out that my dad had Leukemia meant more than just he could die, it meant that life as we knew it would totally change. He was diagnosed with a really rare type of Leukemia that couldn’t be treated in the Honduras, so that meant that we had to move, in the middle of 7th grade. The day my sister and I found out, we went to see him in the hospital. He didn't look too good and was about to start crying. I never thought that from that day on, to enter
As we arrived, my stomach started to turn inside out, and I wasn’t sure why, but I knew when that happens I turn into a nervous wreck. They sat me in the hallway as they chattered about me I was assuming. On our bumpy car ride home, my parents stopped through an ice cream shop, knowing that’s a way to cheer their little boy. They sat me down and told me about how the teacher is concerned with my low-level reading and writing skills. It bothered me very much, that the teacher had never said anything to me one on one. My parents told me that I might be held back, and to stay positive and don’t let this bring you down. This caused so much confusion and discouragement for a seven year old boy. I was still in discomfort after the day reading because of how the kids laughed when I read my
When I was little, me and my family were sitting in the living room and watching T.V. and the next thing we hear is the doorbell. When my mom opened the door our family friend Mary, told my mom that she had dropped her keys in the dumpster and needed me and my
On 29 February 2008, one of my worst nightmares came true. My grandmother was suffering from Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. I was only 10 years and she
I put my academics on the back burner and my grades slowly started to suffer. I didn’t think I had the potential to be a 4.0 students or valedictorian for that matter. I had fun with my friends and thought of school as a torture chamber that I needed to escape from. Coach Mac helped me to see beyond my own VOC and turn all of that around. He enforced “tough love” and in a positive way, scolded some common sense into me. He got me to think about my future and encouraged me to invest in myself. His inspiring speeches and motivational talks helped guide me back on the right path. When I took the time to listen to him, as he did me, I was able to think about my choices and my future, and began to understand the importance of
When the end of my 5th grade year had hit; A land mark of the most traumatizing event of my life was about to take place. My mom had left my father and took us along with her. Over the summer and a few addit...
Later in the year, Blake was notified that he was chosen as a recipient for one of the Make A Wish Foundation wishes. By then he knew he had a life-threatening illness, and that his wish -a trip to Disney World- may be one of his final memories with his family. He was so enthusiastic to fly on an airplane as he headed to Disney World with his mom, sister, and grandparents. It would be his first time flying. The entire week he was gone, I had to discover other ways to entertain myself. There were numerous occasions I was itching to tell him about.
My mom was incarcerated during the time so I lived with my Aunt Pompom. Aunt Pompom never let me and my cousins wake up late for school and if we did, we were driven. Coincidentally on this day both my cousin Zay and I over slept. So we jump up frantically and start putting on our clothes. In the mist of putting on my clothes I come on my menstrual cycle a week before it is supposed to come on. Then, to top that off when we tried to get my aunt up and she told us “yall over sleeping ass better walk”. She did not care if it was my birthday or not. So sadly Zay and I start walking and little did I know nature was also against me, it started to drizzle. I could feel every drip that dropped on me, I just knew I would smell like a wet dog once I got to school. The feelings I had walking were unimaginable I could have just clasped to the ground right then and there because there was no way my day could be enlightened it been ruined from the moment I
Summer break was over, and it was the time to go back to school to my eleventh grade. School for me wasn’t that different as my summer break. I never felt like not going to school after a long summer break because I used to have a lot of fun in school. School for me was a place where you would socialize, gossip, brag, drive attention, miss conduct, daydream, text students, sing, ask silly questions and flirt with girls. I think now you know how my days at school used to be. However, a day has come that I would not expect it to come at all. I suddenly became a much disciplined student that I would not do anything out of the way. It all happened when I meet my new physics professor Jamal Betar who has wonderful qualities that amaze him from other teachers, and he also gave me the true meaning of education that I have never thought of before in my life.