Undergraduate / "Education is my accomplishment" -statement for University of California Prompt 2 [2]

An accomplishment that I have gained is education; through it, I have gained personal growth and independence.
In 2002, my family and I arrived to the United States because of my father's job at the Pakistan Embassy, which allowed him to travel to other countries. I thought that coming to the United States would benefit my education and future goals; however, my parents were threatened by the American culture and they thought that it influenced girls in a negative way. My parents, who were already abusive, started abusing my older sister Ava and I more often and forbid me from continuing my education. At that time, I was volunteering for Desis Rising Up and Moving, an organization that fights fir immigrants' rights; one of the topics DRUM went over was human education rights. I learned that every human has the right to get educated and denying that is against human rights. Since then I believed that my parents had no authority to stop me from receiving education. The day I left my family, I looked in to my parents' faces and thought if I was making the right choice. I pictured my life with them, which would be a life with no education and ongoing abuse from them; I knew that my life would be hard without them too because I knew I would never see them again. I decided it was best to leave.

Starting a new life has been one of the biggest challenges that I have faced. When I left my family, I lived in homeless shelters in New York and I decided to move to San Francisco to start college because I was afraid that in New York City my family would find me. When I moved to San Francisco, I started living in a transitional housing for youth. At first, I had to apply for food stamps because I had no job but my counselor at City College of San Francisco recommended a job at a retail store, which helped me soon become financially independent.

At present, I have gained full financial independence and I am living on my own. The help that I have received has blessed me and in the future, I would like to do the same and help people with my career. In the future, I would love to work in poor countries.