The students and advisors of my Upward Bound Program, sat outside in a circle with an electric candle in our hands as we prepared our hearts for an honest and heart-to-heart conversation. Each student talked about what they had gone through and the struggles they had to face in their lives. Some students spoke about their torn families, thoughts of suicide and not feeling comfortable in their own skin.This brought out my own burden since the age of seven regarding my family where years of altercation, stress, worries, pressure could no longer be contained and my emotions came pouring out.
At the age of eight, I thought of myself as the glue to keeping my family intact. I shielded my brother from the horrendous fights my parents had in the middle of the night and told him that it was considered "normal" for parents to argue. The final fight my parents had led to ear-piercing yelling and our sacred Buddha statue was thrown and shattered into pieces. My mother’s voice echoed through the two story house, as she screamed horrendously at my father about our financial situation downstairs. I hid my
…show more content…
"Call the ambulance!" My advisor immediately dialed 911 as she tried to keep me awake and breathing. My eyes were rolling in and out to the back of my head, with tears consistently falling down my growing pale face. Within the next ten minutes, my body caved in and my arms and legs turned severely numb. When the paramedics arrived, they lifted me onto the stretcher where my eyes were becoming hazy and everything I looked at was a complete blur. My heart was beating rapidly and my fingers curled outwards in a terrifying direction. While driven away, I could hear the paramedics asking me to stay awake, but my head was pounding harshly like the sound of drums and as my eyes slowly closed, a ray of white light slowly
I took a deep breath and told myself it wasn’t going to be that bad and I could just use my instincts. As soon as I turned around the woman fainted, but luckily she was still breathing. She woke up about 30 seconds later and she asked what was going on, I tried to explain as much as I could, but I was just as lost as she was. I started asking all the appropriate questions and this time she had the energy to answer
It's hard for me to say where I'll be in the years to come, already my life has strayed from the path I once thought it would follow. However, that doesn't change my motivation or determination to reach and excel at my personal goals. My whole life I've endured a system that dictated what should be important to me, and while it's helped me learn the practical skills I need outside of an academic setting, I have a passion to grow further from what's expected of me, and so with much enthusiasm I look forward to attending college in which I hope to achieve more by constantly learning and expanding my personal knowledge.
Nadine Burke Harris is a former pediatrician who became the founder and CEO of The Youth of Wellness. She is also a Dr. at one of the best private hospitals in northern California, California Pacific Medical Center. Her goal is “to change the standard practice across demographics” (Burke Harris). When it comes to children it is important that we address the issue regardless. In Dr. Burkes’ TED talk she tells us that in the mid 90’s an exposure had been discovered by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente. This exposure in high doses, “it affects brain development, hormonal system, the immune system and even the way that our DNA is read and transcribed. The exposure has been discovered to be a dramatic increase in the risk for seven out of ten leading causes of death in the United States”(Burke Harris). Alternatively, when Dr. Harris opened a clinic in Bayview Hunters-Point; it is to be known as the poorest underserved neighborhoods in San Francisco. Before she opened
At 10, I never knew whether my father would be sober, reasonable, even pleasant - or drunk, argumentative and abusive. On one February day with four inches of snow on the ground and a freezing rain falling, I was walking home from my cousin's house in the early evening and saw my father lying on the soggy, snow-covered sidewalk. I didn't know what my father would do if I roused him, and I was afraid to find out. Perhaps, subconsciously, I hoped my father wouldn't waken at all. I continued on, did nothing, said nothing. This I will remember with guilt for the rest of my life.
Immediately my adrenaline kicked in and I began to go into shock. For three years I was trained to handle medical dilemmas and seizures, but this was real. After a ten second panic attack subdued, I allowed my training to commence. I asked a witness to call 911 and I jumped to aid by checking her vitals to make sure she was breathing and still alive. Lifeguards and I rolled her onto her side and monitored the length of the convulsions and eventually medics arrived and took over the scene. This lady survived this catastrophe and returned to the park less than a week later and found me, she was extremely grateful for myself and the lifeguard that aided her. The gratitude and appreciation she expressed made me enjoy and respect my
Maybe it’s the fact that I tend to stay in my room all weekend, which leads to people thinking I’m studying when in reality I am probably binge watching a TV show or maybe it’s my glasses, but most people who don’t know me too well assume that I am smart. Now that is a great thing for me because I don’t have to try as hard to impress them, but I end up finding myself in a bit of a problem. The problem is that everyone thinks I enjoy admiring school textbooks. But the truth is I’m usually admiring my Justin Bieber poster on my bedroom wall. Ever since I was in sixth grade I’ve been a huge fan of Bieber. His music always brought a feeling of calmness and back in the day his “never say never” motto, was what I lived by. I might still be living by that motto because I’ve decided to write this essay
This meeting lasted about 1 hour and I felt very welcomed in this warm compassionate setting. Attending this meeting, I knew that I wasn’t going to be judged or looked down upon because of my situation or issues. Everyone who attended this meeting has a story to tell and that is why they choose to come. I choose to attend this meeting because of my past struggles, so I felt that I could relate to the material that was presented. The ...
Summer vacation, and school ends for about three months, and then you have as much fun as you can, then back to school… right? Well I had to go to summer school, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Everything was going fine, I had a job after summer school, and that was going fine as well. They say that summer is supposed to be fun and exciting, and it usually is for me and my family. However in July my father started coughing up blood. My father usually doesn’t make it his top priority to go to the doctors, so he waited about four weeks until he really didn’t feel good.
It has been said that every family faces conflict most of the time, so any person feeling like a problem they experience thinks that their problem is unique, when in fact, depending on the problem, the probability of it being relatable to other people in this world is very high. As embarrassing as it might be, I would like to admit that I used to think this way about my problems. This made me feel like voicing my opinions would be an irrational thing because not many would relate. Upon realizing that this was not true—and that many people could relate to me—opening up was no longer a challenge in my life. This was a secret key that helped me feel better about myself and to have the ability to express myself freely without fear of repercussions. The past few sentences might indicate the direction this essay is
With music blasting, voices singing and talking, it was another typical ride to school with my sister. Because of our belated departure, I went fast, too fast. We started down the first road to our destination. This road is about three miles long and filled with little hills. As we broke the top of one of the small, blind hills in the middle of the right lane was a dead deer. Without any thought, purely by instinct I pulled the wheel of the car to the left and back over to the right. No big deal but I was going fast. The car swerved back to the left, to the right, to the left. Each time I could feel the car scratching the earth with its side. My body jolted with the sporadic movements of the car. The car swerved to the right for the last time. With my eyes sealed tight, I could feel my body float off the seat of the car.
I woke up disoriented and with harsh fluorescent lights in my face. I closed my eyes against the sudden onslaught of senses, faintly hearing a medical drone alerting a doctor to my consciousness. Slowly and unwillingly I am pulled to my senses and I recognize the pain searing through my entire body. I open my eyes and realize I am in fact in a hospital, and panic grips my chest.
There is a point in everyone’s life when they step back and realize “I can’t do this anymore, it’s ruining my life”. Many of my friends have started smoking cigarettes while drinking at a very young age, and continue to use this drug currently and don’t realize the affect it has on their future. While I have been smart enough to avoid smoking, I haven’t been as wise at making decisions when it comes to drinking. The amount of partying I’ve done in college has taken over my life, and has had a huge impact on my grades. Changing my drinking habits and continuing to avoid cigarettes will enable me to be the best I can be for the rest of my college experience.
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
...rt. I could taste real blood leaking out of my mouth. A bolt of lightning jolted every nerve within me and an aggravating pain caused me to collapse. I was shaking and by eyes bulged out as a sharp pain forced its way through every nerve and vessel in my body. My brain was closing; I knew this was the end. My intestines felt as though they were being ripped into thin strips and blood was gushing out of me like a fountain. My ribs were being crushed into powder and a cold air entered my half open body freezing every part of me, every cell, and every drop of blood. I was iced until I suddenly froze. My eyes were still open and I could still see a little. They went. They disappeared. They ran like the wind, rushed like the waves and vanished into thin air.
When I left my room, my mother knew that I had gone through a rough time, and I did not want to talk to her about it. Even though there was only a month left in my school year, I promised myself that I would be completely truthful to my friends, my family, my heritage, and myself. I expected all my friends to leave me, but I was fully prepared for this. However, none of this ever happened. My friends didn’t leave me, I wasn’t alone at the lunch table, I wasn’t even seem differently by those around me. I had failed my family by doing this, and I wished I had stopped acting like someone I wasn’t sooner. This is one of the only mistakes I have made which I consider a failure because it had taken me close to a year to fix, and this is why I consider it my most successful failure.