Does Failure Make you wake up?
People have to cross many types of borders to change their life directions. Some people struggle to maintain their behaviour and also their personalities. Other people fight against nature to change their attitude as well as their way of thinking. The border I was crossing was the behavioural change as well as the language boundaries. It left a big mark on the person I am in the present day. I changed myself from laziness and not self-conscious to having a good moral also from getting low grade to high grade in school.
In sixth grade, I could not have cared less about my future. My friends and I would utilize clever students’ minds to cheat on tests. One day, the teacher who never smiled gave us a test. He
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wanted most of his students to fail his class because he only liked clever students. All of the students were hard at work on their tests, but we were waiting for one smart lady to complete her test. As my friends and I were gazing at the ceiling, the teacher gave us a suspicious look because we didn’t write anything on our test papers. Then the teacher separated the clever students from us, and he sat before them to make sure they did not give us the answers. At that time, I felt like I was losing one of my hands. I was saying to myself, if I pass this test I will never cheat again. My heart was beating like a cheetah who is running to kill his prey.Then I woke up from this shocking moment and began speculating about the answers. Finally, the school closed and I knew I had failed the test. I was praying to God not to hear horrible news. When my sister returned home, her face had a disapproving look. She began hollering at me. I said, "What happened? Where is my report card?” Suddenly she violently tossed the report card on my face. When I saw the report card, it said: "Abdulfeta ought to repeat grade 6 for the next year." I felt like someone knocked me out and my soul was taken away and sent to the sky because I was staring at the floor without even being able to blink. I was paralyzed with fear and shame. After that day, I began perusing my grade 6 book. When I felt exhausted, I glanced at my report card to motivate me. I looked at that report card so many times that the paper was starting to wrinkle up from my firm grip. When the school opened the next year, I studied every night for three to four hours.. I went to the library instead of hanging out on the streets goofing around with my friends. It paid off because I got all A’s. I kept the stamina going the following year. I had a newfound confidence that I could persevere. I asked my instructor to tell me the strategies for being a top student. He said that no one is born being smart, but to be smart, you need to work hard. One of the strategies you should do is be friends with brilliant students, read with them, ask them the strategy they used and avoided hanging out with careless friends. After the conversation, I was trying to be friends with clever students and minimize the amount of time I spent with my previous friends. During the first quarter, I became one of the top students in grade 7 until grade 10. Now I have transformed from cheater on the test to helping other students as much as I can to improve their education, and from hanging out on the street with careless friends to spending time with clever students in the library. When I see students who cheat, I know they have the same potential as me. They are not born lazy. It is an atrocious habit that they have to change, just like I did. I studied for many hours to be one of the best students in the class. Similarly, to my story, there is a story we read in class that shows there is a payoff behind working hard. The title of the story is called “Green Card” by Alberto Alvarado-Rios. He said, “take what you want and pay for it”(Rios 219). This quote illustrated when one immigrant came to the United States; there are a lot of opportunities which the person can use. At the same time, the person would face a lot of challenges and risks to get whatever the person want. One of the challenges they faced is discrimination and injustice. In other words, immigrant and natives or who born here are not treated the same way. Like immigrant in the U.S, I have struggled a lot to be a successful student in the class. It was challenging for me to study for 1 hour when I first started reading because I did not study before. It was utterly strange and boring for me. Over time, I enjoyed reading my books with the help of my new friends or the people who were smart and clever. At the end of each semester, my grading was boosting a lot more than my friends. It’s paid off because I could be a model for all students in my school and also top students in the class. The lesson I learned in 6th grade which was working hard and studying helped me when I moved to Boston from Ethiopia.
It was challenging for me to adapt the language as well as the culture. When I started high school. It was entirely different from the school back home. There was only one Ethiopian out of the school. It took me sometimes to know and be more familiar with the school like Jessica Hernandez, who published her story on Huffington Post magazine company.The title of her story was called “Jessica is An Immigrant.” She talked about her experience when she came to the United States. She started elementary school in the U.S. On the first day of school; she asked the teacher “shoe”. Everyone was laughing at her because she was trying to say “Tissue”(1). That was a turning point for Jessica. She started to study English to improve her English. After a couple of years, she became fluent in English. Like Jessica, I was struggling to improve my English after I came to the U.S, despite the fact that most of my teachers in Ethiopia were from England. It was completely new to me, especially the accent. Hence, to communicate with others, I watched a lot of American Movies and made companions in my neighborhood whose first language are English. Over time, I have been showing improvement. These helped me a lot to cross language border.
In the story, I was fighting the nature to be a new person. Everyone is born with unique behaviour and personality. I was born to be aggressive and not care about others, but failing made me rise and cross this behavioural border. In other words, it’s hard to change someone's behaviour, if they born with it. You have to have a high spirit to work hard and be patience to change the behaviour and your character to be a new person. That’s why Jessica Hernandez said on her story, “Your life does not get better by chance. It's getting better by
change”(19)
... a need to serve justice out to the world. He would go out looking for injustice and cruel people that he could teach a lesson to. Finally he simply became obsessed with and would go looking for any reason to fight people. He had slowly became the person he had feared as a child. After a long time he was sick of what he had become and turned to creativity to change that. He began to write and from that writing he realized that he did not need to fight he could write and that writing made him feel better than fighting ever did. This memoir really portrays the impact violence has on a person’s life and how with a push in the right direction then can be helped. No one ever stops being who they were but they can build on that person to become someone stronger and more to their liking.
Coping with two different sides of you can be challenging especially in American society. By being bilingual you always have a small character inside of you telling you what to do and how to react. As being an immigrant myself, I agree on the importance of public language. Human beings have a natural instinct to be happy in socially involved activities. To communicate with your peers and have a mutual understanding is a great blessing. However, that doesn’t mean you disregard the importance of your own mother tongue that made you who you are and gave you a unique identity. Using myself as an example, I speak a tribal language that is full of rich culture and identity, signifying the story and history of our people. My father prefers my siblings and I do not speak any English at home and only speak Pashto. I try to go by his sayings because I believe that by living in a western society and going to English speaking schools, I will gradually assimilate into their community and will be able to communicate without difficulty. Contrary, by not speaking Pashto at home and with family, I will not only lose my language, but my intimacy to my unique culture and heritage. Therefore, I believe that you can use your mother language and public language together to only enhance your confidence in both
Being an Eritrean-American, I have had to learn and balance out both cultures. This came with obstacles that I had to tackle and has allowed me to grow as a person. From learning two different languages, history, and cultures, my experiences have definitely impacted how I want to live my life in this world.
Many people moved from their country to another to have a better life, moreover; they would adopt another culture and shifted to new culture. when I first come to the United States, it is hard for me to interact with culture because American culture is different from Ethiopian culture. For some Ethiopian people is easy, they actually adopt American culture. today, it is going to be hard to leave and to come in the United States as immigrant because of the new president of The United States, Donald Trump. There are two differences between Ethiopian and American culture such as, have a right to speak and how they are respect the elders.
I remember the first time I came to America; I was 10 years old. Everything was exciting! From getting into an airplane, to viewing magnificent, huge buildings from a bird’s eye view in the plane. It was truly memorable. After staying few days at my mother’s house, my father and I wanted to see what Dallas looks like. But because my mother was working the whole day, it wasn’t convenient for her to show us the area except only on Sundays. Finally, we went out to the nearby mall with my mother. My father and I were astonished after looking at a variety of stores. But after looking at different stores, we were finally tired and hungry, so we went into McDonald’s. Not being familiar with fast food restaurants, we were curious to try American
There are various changes that can occur in an individual’s life. Some variations are very little and would not affect your lifecycle very greatly. Nevertheless, other events could be very significant and could change a person’s entire life, such as marrying, giving birth to the baby, or losing someone special. The important event that transformed my life is coming to the United States of America to get education and to study. When I first arrived in this country, I comprehended that an incredible change would happen in my life both mentally and physically. After living more than one year in the United States, I definitely believe that moving to the United States is an advantageous change for me. This change offers me an opportunity to live a healthy lifestyle as well as a new way of thinking that are significant for me and the most importantly it provided me a better education in a simple way.
I am an chinese and mexican american. You might think those are the best mixes of race you can get but you are truly wrong? Growing up in a small farm town in the outskirts of San Diego I truly wish I was white like the rest of the kids at my school. For the hardships I have faced with race discrimination I am truly ashamed of being the color and human genetics I have.
For me adapting a new language was tough because where I came from we don’t verbalize English. So, before we move to the United States I had to get that primary knowledge of English in a short duration. At that time I consummated my one semester of 9 the grade. My parents thought of dropping me out school, so I can just focus on English. Since then my main focus was to learn English. I think that was the hardest thing I have done in my life. Day by day I was learning incipient thing, but I wasn’t quit understanding the language.
My family is first generation immigrants from Iraq, life coming to America was very hard. When we first came we did not speak much english. The first thing that made it so hard for us was learning a new language then having to take our citizenship test not to long after. Some of the questions that I studied for I know many native born Americans who would know the answers. This country though gave me an oppurintity that I never had before. My dad was drafted into the gulf war and during that time Sadam Hussian would have anyone killed if they did not. So my family fled to Saudi Arabia after time in the refugee camp we came to America. I feel that my story of life is so different, but I know many of us (immigrants) can relate to parts of my experiences.
United States usually known as the “melting pot” and it is a typical immigrant country. In the past 400 years, United States has become a mixture of more than 100 ethnic groups. Immigrants bring they own dream and come to this land, some of them looking for better life for themselves and some want to make some money to send back home or they want their children to grow up in better condition. Throughout the history there’s few times of large wave of immigration and it is no exaggeration to say that immigrants created United States. For this paper I interview my neighbor and his immigration story is pretty interesting.
Life of the Immigrants in My Antonia William Cather provided a great amount of information about the "old wild west" and the expansion of the United States. In My Antonia, Jim Burden tells a story of his childhood, the people in his life, and the struggles he and his surroundings faced during this time. At age ten, Jim Burden was sent by his relatives to be raised by his grandparents in the Nebraska prairie after his parents died. When he arrived at his new home, he was introduced to a Bohemian family that had just immigrated to America: the Shimerdas. Jim and Antonia, the Shimerda's daughter, quickly became friends.
Life is about setting goals, and accomplish everything you set your mind to. We have all break some type of boundaries that stopped us. Some barriers are meant to be cross, just like some rules are meant to be broke; that’s what life is all about. We all have to go through it. The biggest, and toughest border I had to cross in my life was to move to the US, there were so many changes. I had to sacrifice a lot of things fortunately, it was worth it. Because I have a whole new world know, a world that changed my perception of everything from language, culture, and even the education.
In the story of The Secret Sharer, by Joseph Conrad, A man (the Narrator ) becomes the captain of a ship. All the shipmates have known each other for quite a while, so when the Narrator comes aboard he feels and is treated like a stranger. One night he comes encounter with a mysterious man, known as Leggatt, who hanging from the ladder of his ship. He feels an instant connection with him even after he learns that this man is a murder. He chooses to take care of this man and not tell anyone because he looks almost exactly like him and he has a similar mental struggle which leads him to believe in an ultimate connection that he does not want to separate.
Immigrants have been moving to the United States of America from foreign countries for centuries. Though assimilating is very important, some may argue that the process of assimilation strips away an immigrant’s personal identity. In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Gloria Anzaldúa argues that the preservation of her Mexican culture, especially her language, is essential in holding on to her identity as a Chicana. On the contrary, in “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan uses her childhood experiences with her Chinese mother to exemplify how their struggles with cultural and language barriers helped her accept who she is as a Chinese-American woman. How an immigrant reacts to the adversities faced while assimilating into American culture will determine how
My family emigrated from the Dominican Republic when I was two years old. At the time, none of us spoke any fluent English. Due to their limited education,