My Experience In My Life

Ten years ago, I was officially a college dropout; leaving Wiley College after only two years was the biggest mistake of my life. Ten years ago, I created a narrative about the type of people who went to college. I made myself believe that college was a place exclusively for extremely smart people who came from nice middle-class families. College was not a place where an African American who lived in subsidized housing went. Although I was enrolled in college and doing quite well, I fell victim to self-doubt and ultimately believed that I did not have the ability to graduate. Consequently, after only two years, I dropped out of college.

Sixteen years old can be a very confusing age in any person’s life. We’re expected to act like adults but get treated like children, the age we begin to prepare ourselves for our last year of high school, the year we start to look into colleges we want to attend and what it is we want to do with our lives. But for me it was the age when my parents thought they would lead separate lives.

On August 2, 1999, I was born on a Monday afternoon, at 2:30 p.m, in Hospital Conde De S. Januario. My family resided with my grandmother at Rua Formosa, Apartment 7 on the first floor. She lived behind the Cathedral of Macau, which is a famous landmark and tourist attraction. While my brother, Salman, and I were growing up, we attended the same pre-schools. One of the schools was called Seng Kung Wui. In the morning, all the grades would line up and wait for the teacher to come escort them upstairs to the classroom. I could barely last an hour without being with my brother, and I would cry if he didn't stand in my grade’s line. As a result, Sal started waiting in my line with me, until my teacher came to get my class. After I went upstairs, he would run back to his line to be with his friends. Almost everyday we wore matching outfits, and he would hold my hand while we walked inside because I did not want to be alone. After school, our Avo (grandma in Cantonese), would take us to play in the Sao Francisco Park, get ice cream, or walk through the markets to get our daily groceries. I can still remember walking through the streets and taking in all of the sights, smells, and sounds. I loved the strong aroma of spicy fish ball soup or the overwhelming scent of cigarette smoke that filled the air. The markets were filled with countless friendly faces and a wide variety of merchandise waiting to be sold.The voices of locals bartering over prices and motorcycles racing down the

The story began about a year and some months ago. Early in the Fall 2016 semester, I met a girl named Ann through a friend of mine. My first impression of Ann was that she was very pretty, but she talked a lot. I mean a lot! After I met her, the three of us began to hangout a couple of times each week. Even though she talked a lot it was fun having her around because of the energy she brought to any situation. At first, I felt that being around her drained my energy, but I eventually got accustomed to it, and grew to feed off it.

Maya Angelou once said, “What is the fear of living? It’s being preeminently of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility of yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.” Everyday I think about everything I went through while growing up and forming into the person I am today. Going through all the experiences I have gone through, I didn’t realize how much they would impact me today and serve as lessons. Today I am a freshman in college. I did not think I would make it this far. The precious gift of life is to enjoy every moment as if it is your last.

My life, or perhaps in the manner that I perceive it, has been overwhelmingly filled with enlightening and repressive circumstances that could have been averted, but all in all, makes up one's destiny. These events intricately tailored me into a young man that grew conscientious of the detrimental behavior of “acting before thinking” and into the realm of “thinking before acting". What I would soon come to understand was that through sheer patience, and trial-and-error it instilled within me new insights to learn from and that the most triumphant moments in my life began at the crossroads of unknowingness, a decision to stay in mediocrity, or the pursuit towards personal greatness- thus the decision had to be met.

"Take a moment to think of just flexibility, love, and trust," has been my mantra for this whole senior year. It’s something I try to think about when I decide anything important in my life. Rather it’s setting goals for myself, procuring different interests, or choosing in right college, thinking about flexibility, love, and trust is how I try to keep my mind straight for the next couple of years.

Imagine your story becoming the forerunner of someone else’s. Someone you have never met, yet because of one story, he or she found the strength and courage to become a person far greater than ever imagined. A story of unimaginable adventures, lessons, and hardships, this is the story I, Thu Dang, will create for myself and others.

Have you ever wondered why amazing things happen to you? I have. To have something happen to you in a way that you cannot explain is kind of like a miracle. During my childhood, I experienced a series of events that really marked my life completely. Have I spoken to anyone about them? Yes, but I have not gone into details of these happenstances. The details, which I have not told anyone before, are the most important parts of this narrative since you will understand the significance of their correlations. They marked me completely and forever made me strong.

The never ending days of summer were quickly winding down. It was that time of year again. That time where every kid dreads waking up early every day. Where we have to sit on hard as rock chairs for hours. Eat foods that look and taste like a mixture of foreign cuisines together in a bowl. My fulfilled summer adventures were now just a mere distant memory like that old shirt tucked away at the bottom of a drawer to be never seen again. Now I have to face reality; it was my final year as a high schooler.

When I look at how different our lives were five months ago so many things run through my mind, “What could we have done differently?” “What could I have done differently?” The week of finals before the end of my junior year I wondered if bad things really do happen to good people, or if good people do bad things that put them into bad places.

Looking back on my childhood before August of 2016, I can say I’ve had a sheltered, carefree, and rather easy life. I was content with all aspects of my life; I had wonderful friends, had been a straight “A” student for my entire educational career, had a relatively well-paying job for a fourteen-year-old boy, and my family and all those around me seemed equally satisfied and pleased with their lives. This would change in early August of 2016. The sudden and terrible news hit me in such a way that I felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me. When my parents announced they were getting a divorce, it astonished me because I did not foresee its coming. I sat aghast, unable to comprehend the words which had just assailed my ears. I felt feeble and vulnerable to the world, as if a strong enough breeze would be able to whisk me away, and I hoped it would, to create distance between myself and the situation.

Hello , Im Jamie i'm 18 years old and I want to travel the world when I get out of college but that but that seems almost impossible for me .

Suddenly, I was awakened and violently thrown towards the front of the airplane. My eyes shot open and I blinked three or four times to adjust my dry, out of place contact lenses. The light bothered my sensitive eyes but I was too nervous to even think about shutting them. I spread my arms and legs creating a human starfish, contracted my stiff muscles, and let out a tiny grunt. I stood up from the same seat I was acquainted with for nine hours. When I rose to my feet, something felt strange, something felt different, something felt out of the ordinary. I quickly realized, I was standing at the London Heathrow Airport about to embark on, what I originally thought would be, the most miserable trip of my life.

It is not too long ago that I decided to become a pharmacist. I lived in South Korea most of my life. Back then, I had no idea what I wanted to be other than thinking about immigrate to the United States. I had chance to visit my uncle’s college graduation when I was a little boy and I only dreamed about living in the U.S ever afterward. For example, I decided to go to nursing school simply because there are more chances to move to the U.S as a nurse. The problem was I did not do well in terms of academic performance because I only thought about how to move to the U.S. Additionally, I admitted to hospital couple of times because of a pneumothorax so my gpa bottomed out.