Undergraduate / 'Academics, bookwork, school' - Quest Bridge Biographical Essay [3]

We are interested in learning more about you and the context in which you have grown up, formed your aspirations and accomplished your academic successes. Please describe the factors and challenges that have most shaped your personal life and aspirations. How have these factors caused you to grow? (800 word limit)

Academics, bookwork, school. These are the three aspects of my life that I place one hundred percent of my effort to ensure perfection. But for what reason? Because I enjoy learning? Because I love reading? Because I like school? There is one reason alone that gives me the passion I have for academics: my mother.

During the first five years of my childhood, I was raised by my mother. My father played a very minimal part in my life, only visiting on rare occasions. While it was sad and unfortunate for me to grow with no father, I held no hatred against him. Instead, I use my fatherless scenario as a motivation for me to achieve greatness and to prove that even without a father, I can succeed.

As time passed, my mother came to the realization that given the situation we were in, college or any sort of higher education would be impossible for me, due to our finances. At the age of five, she left me with my grandmother and migrated to the United States as an illegal immigrant in order to obtain the means to send me to college. As the days passed, I would grow more and more saddened by the fact that my mother was thousands of miles away, in an unknown world, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, with no one to go to...suffering all for my sake. I felt powerless, knowing that she was working tirelessly for my gain and I had nothing to give in return.

After seven years had passed, my mother was finally able to gain legal residency in the United States for both her and I. At the age of eleven, I left behind all that I had known on the small island of Jamaica and migrated to the United States to be with my mother. Initially, I believed that all our struggles had now come to an end and that we would live a peaceful, trouble free life. I was sorely mistaken. Instead of moving into a cozy home, we moved into a one bedroom apartment, in Brownsville, New York: one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Brooklyn. It was here that I experienced firsthand the hardships my mother had been facing for years. She had two jobs at the time; but even so, we were barely able to make rent each month. With the lack of sufficient income, luxuries that I once had, such as an abundance of food and new clothing, were now gone. In order to gain a better occupation to provide for us, my mother went back to school. Now with two jobs as well as school, my mother was rarely ever home. This left me with the responsibility of cleaning and caring for the home, as well as attending to my own studies. After seeing the struggles my mother goes through in order for me to have a better future, I made a decision: to strive and succeed academically to ensure my mother's work is not in vain.

However, my academic achievements went beyond just achieving for the sake of my mother's work. Rather, I took into account all that she had done and learned from her sacrifices. I now take this knowledge and use it to motivate myself to achieve the best in order to impact others so that future parents can instill their children with the values of hard work and dedication I have learned from my mother without exposing them to strife and struggle.

Time passed, during which we moved from Brownsville to East Rutherford, New Jersey. My mother finally graduated from her two year college. With this, she decided that it was time for us to make one final move: three hundred miles away to Rochester, New York. She purchased a home and within months, we were able to move...though, at a cost. In order to obtain enough money to purchase the house, she had to sell my childhood home in Jamaica. She then had to resign from her jobs in order to move and once again, we were financially burdened; but on a worse scale, since my mother now lacked employment.

However, in time, my mother was able to gain a job, now being able to provide for us and very few luxuries here and there. By migrating to the United States, my mother has allowed me a freedom that Jamaica never offered. Instead of holding the guilt of her suffering for my sake, I now embrace the freedom given to me. With my goal in mind, the American Dream now seems like a reality. To this day, I maintain that goal of success; not to make my work seem like it was worth it, but to ensure my mother's hard work, sleepless nights, and dedication were not in vain.