Challenge And Joy Essay
Challenge And Joy EssayChallenge And Joy Essay
Challenges are when one tries to attain a certain goal(s), when one commits to a quality and aim and strives to achieve that goal. My biggest challenge in life was coming to America and adjusting to this strange land. Coming here to America was very exciting for me. I did not realize all the hardships I had to face in my early teenage years. In the story “Listening to the Owls” Sander’s main goal was his communication with nature are mainly with the owls. Sanders describes the physical and emotional hardships that he goes throughout the story. Even though I didn’t face similar hardships like Sanders, I did go through a lot of mental and emotional problems to accomplish my goal.
I came here to America in 1993. I loved and enjoyed the beauty of this place. I mainly came here to get a better education than I could get back home and also because the job opportunities were very good. They have jobs here for all ages starting from 15 and on, whereas in India no one without a college degree had any kind of job. Even before I started high school I thought I would make many friends since I was a very sociable person. But that didn’t come true. It all started for me when I started high school in America. I didn’t know how to address people, to act around them or just simply to have a conversation with them. Every time I said something I was made fun of for my accent, the way I dressed etc. I didn’t have friends at all. This was a big thing for me because coming from India was a totally different environment for me. There I had many friends, spoke the same language. The whole culture and living styles were totally different than what they had here in America. It was hard for me to get adjusted for the first two years of my high school. I came home crying everyday because I didn’t have anyone to go to tell my problems. My family couldn’t help me out because they didn’t go to school here nor did they understand the position I was in.
A year passed by and the same thing was going on except that now I probably had a few friends. I was trying to find out what was wrong with me that this should happen. I changed the way I dressed, the way I behaved, the way I looked and everything, believing that at least this way the students would stop making fun of me. However I felt that I was no longer being myself and I felt that I was trying to be someone who I wasn’t. I couldn’t do that any longer. One day I thought to myself maybe its not me who had to change anyone or anything. I knew that me ignoring what my peers said didn’t work, so I started to reply to them. That is when I started to take this as a challenge and not to worry and stress about it. After all they are all people who hadn’t been taught to respect any from any other country and weren’t used to anyone else but their own familiar towns people. Now this was just a game for me to tackle, which needed a lot of work to put in. Every day I had something smart to say when they approached me and what it did was to provoke a thought in their minds. I also became active in school. I joined the track team and also was an active member in a lot of clubs and organizations. This kept me busy with work. Whenever I achieved a reward in my academic performance I felt very happy because I knew I mainly came here to get education and the kids who did make fun of me weren’t really going anywhere. These rewards helped motivate to study and learn more as well as having fun.
Just as in the story “A black explorer at the north pole” by Hensen where his main goal was to get to be the first one to get to the north pole with all the problems he had to face, I also dealt with the challenge and achieved my goal which was to graduate high school with honors. Finally in my senior year kids in my school stopped making fun of me and I had also made more friends since they realized what kind of person I was. At the end of all this I was happy in a way that all this had happened because for one thing it was a challenge and also it was a very good learning experience for me.