Success is not a measure of how much one has accomplished; it is a measure of how well one has utilized the resources available to them. Adversity is defeated by the mere act of trying to succeed in spite of catastrophic circumstances, regardless of whether or not success was met. It is about finding knowledge in suffering and using that to change things. The conflict of my own history, a story that was almost never written, taught me that it is in the hardships we endure that we are presented with the greatest opportunity of all: the chance to change a life, and in the process, have our own changed. Among the pages of my own personal tragedy, I found success.
My mother's womb provided little defense against my father's wrath. When my mother was six months pregnant, my father, in a drunken rage, beat her. My twin brother was killed instantly, and I, at only a pound, first opened my eyes to the world. From the beginning, my picture of the world was stained red. Beating after beating did my mother and I endure at the hand of my father. Then, my mother divorced my father, but my father wasn't done with me. When I was a child, he would stop beating me and force my frail body into his car and careen drunkenly all over the roads of Mississippi. As I grew, the beating only intensified.
My mother tried to spare me the heft of my father's hand, but sorrow lay on the path away from my father as well. Before I was eight, I knew homelessness, hunger, pestilence, and poverty. Even when we found a semblance of stability, I remained sick and money was never really there for medicine. Every other week any strength I had accrued was violently removed.
Right before I entered high school, my mother had two major strokes. It fell to me to care for the woman who had cared for me. Over the course of my secondary school career, Mom had several transient ischemic attacks. These were basically miniature strokes, but my mom insisted on working to support us. Whenever she got sick, I would nurse her back to enough health that she could type, and then she would be off to work again.
No sooner had Mom recovered than my grandfather got sick. An old stubborn Navy Chief, he had neglected his diabetes and went into both kidney and heart failure. He lay dead on the table for over 5 minutes and was in a coma for two weeks. Everyday, I sat by his bed and talked to him about how he had to wake up to see me graduate from college. That has always been his fondest wish, since no one in our family has ever even attended college. Then one day, he woke up. The doctor's were stunned. But he wasn't better. His health mandated strict care, and so, for a year, I traveled an hour a day to administer his medications, check his blood sugar, cook, and perhaps most important of all, talk to him.
The background of my life's artwork is filled with deepest black and bloodiest red, but, to me, it is a masterpiece because among the swirls of sin and sorrow are points of brightest light, glittering against the canvas like stars in the night sky. Those lights are the opportunities my existence has offered- infinite, unfathomable, and beautiful. Amongst such adversity present in my life, where could education emerge? The answer is just that: amongst such adversity. My education resides in the ruins of the catastrophe around me; my lessons are scrawled in the ashes of my innocence. I do not regret the life I have lived because I have learned from the life I have lived.
To think that I was alone in the adversity that accompanied my educational career always seemed absurd. I knew that even in my own community there were kids who, like me, couldn't always get to school because of their home life and who only got to eat a full meal in the cafeteria. The circumstances in my life that allowed me to empathize with these students empowered me to do something about it. My junior year of high school I helped found the Youth Advisory Council, a student led organization dedicated to ensuring a great education for anyone who sought one. Over the course of the following year, I spearheaded several campaigns to help reduce the drop-out rate, including providing peer-to-peer counseling services, tutoring students in courses they were struggling in, and working with teachers to accommodate for circumstances that made a normal education impossible. My life was changed by the smiles of those students. I had given them an opportunity and in doing so, I saw my own.
The first time I saw a look of understanding dawn of on the face of a student I was working with, I knew I wanted to teach, and it was for the same reasons that compelled me to want to one day give students a great education that I came to crave one. A great education offers the opportunity to succeed in spite of adversity. College, to me, is my chance to learn unencumbered by my past. I can build on prior knowledge while giving myself a fresh start on life. That's the opportunity I want to give my students: the chance to use the education I give them to be who they want to be, not what circumstance has made them.
My mother's womb provided little defense against my father's wrath. When my mother was six months pregnant, my father, in a drunken rage, beat her. My twin brother was killed instantly, and I, at only a pound, first opened my eyes to the world. From the beginning, my picture of the world was stained red. Beating after beating did my mother and I endure at the hand of my father. Then, my mother divorced my father, but my father wasn't done with me. When I was a child, he would stop beating me and force my frail body into his car and careen drunkenly all over the roads of Mississippi. As I grew, the beating only intensified.
My mother tried to spare me the heft of my father's hand, but sorrow lay on the path away from my father as well. Before I was eight, I knew homelessness, hunger, pestilence, and poverty. Even when we found a semblance of stability, I remained sick and money was never really there for medicine. Every other week any strength I had accrued was violently removed.
Right before I entered high school, my mother had two major strokes. It fell to me to care for the woman who had cared for me. Over the course of my secondary school career, Mom had several transient ischemic attacks. These were basically miniature strokes, but my mom insisted on working to support us. Whenever she got sick, I would nurse her back to enough health that she could type, and then she would be off to work again.
No sooner had Mom recovered than my grandfather got sick. An old stubborn Navy Chief, he had neglected his diabetes and went into both kidney and heart failure. He lay dead on the table for over 5 minutes and was in a coma for two weeks. Everyday, I sat by his bed and talked to him about how he had to wake up to see me graduate from college. That has always been his fondest wish, since no one in our family has ever even attended college. Then one day, he woke up. The doctor's were stunned. But he wasn't better. His health mandated strict care, and so, for a year, I traveled an hour a day to administer his medications, check his blood sugar, cook, and perhaps most important of all, talk to him.
The background of my life's artwork is filled with deepest black and bloodiest red, but, to me, it is a masterpiece because among the swirls of sin and sorrow are points of brightest light, glittering against the canvas like stars in the night sky. Those lights are the opportunities my existence has offered- infinite, unfathomable, and beautiful. Amongst such adversity present in my life, where could education emerge? The answer is just that: amongst such adversity. My education resides in the ruins of the catastrophe around me; my lessons are scrawled in the ashes of my innocence. I do not regret the life I have lived because I have learned from the life I have lived.
To think that I was alone in the adversity that accompanied my educational career always seemed absurd. I knew that even in my own community there were kids who, like me, couldn't always get to school because of their home life and who only got to eat a full meal in the cafeteria. The circumstances in my life that allowed me to empathize with these students empowered me to do something about it. My junior year of high school I helped found the Youth Advisory Council, a student led organization dedicated to ensuring a great education for anyone who sought one. Over the course of the following year, I spearheaded several campaigns to help reduce the drop-out rate, including providing peer-to-peer counseling services, tutoring students in courses they were struggling in, and working with teachers to accommodate for circumstances that made a normal education impossible. My life was changed by the smiles of those students. I had given them an opportunity and in doing so, I saw my own.
The first time I saw a look of understanding dawn of on the face of a student I was working with, I knew I wanted to teach, and it was for the same reasons that compelled me to want to one day give students a great education that I came to crave one. A great education offers the opportunity to succeed in spite of adversity. College, to me, is my chance to learn unencumbered by my past. I can build on prior knowledge while giving myself a fresh start on life. That's the opportunity I want to give my students: the chance to use the education I give them to be who they want to be, not what circumstance has made them.
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