Poverty crushes hope and that is certainly the case for my mother and older sisters. Although my five sisters and I grew up under the same roof, we each view the years spent in that two-bed room, loud and sometimes violent home differently. Furthermore, my siblings and I grew up fatherless and as a result, my eldest siblings took the brunt of the burden. They will tell you so. As the youngest, I never had to miss school or adopt the role of a caregiver. Occasionally, I rode my mother’s emotional rollercoaster and witnessed her desperation to reestablish self-worth and financial security. For my sisters, growing up poor was a minor piece of a much larger puzzle; a puzzle that was ripped to shreds by my abusive and alcoholic grandfather, then
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My mother’s seventh grade education hindered my language skills and affected my readiness to learn. My vocabulary was smaller and developed slowly compared to my peers, which discouraged me from reading. Moreover, my mother’s metric for life was to pay the bills, so her interactions with me were short and unsupportive at times. She simply could not provide my siblings and I with the essential resources we needed to learn, such as a computer and books. Yet, what may appear to be deficiencies in my family, they are not. Instead, my upbringing is a source of strength and has given me the spirit to place one foot in front of the other, using love, hope, family, and purpose to reach another pinnacle in my life—applying to law …show more content…
For example, as a first generation Mexican American, I struggled to learn Spanish. When I encountered Spanish, it had been beaten out of my mother and filed in the “did not use” cabinet. As a result, she did not speak nor encourage me to learn the language. Moreover, I viewed Spanish as a liability and weakness because it made me feel un-American. Not to mention, Spanish separated me from my Mexican culture, at times acting as a source of ridicule and embarrassment because I did not comprehend it. Thus, learning a second language was an academic and psychological challenge for me because Spanish, like English, is complex. I have studied Spanish on high and subsidiary levels by learning the rules of grammar and punctuation. Further, I have studied different linguistic structures, which make up a sentence and how they work, where they work, and why they work as they do. Now, I can confidently say that I am fluent in Spanish and can have conversations with my mother in her native language. My assertive mentality and self-discipline to learn Spanish has allowed me to gain a better comprehension and command of English which is essential for any lawyer in the United
My mother’s seventh grade education hindered my language skills and affected my readiness to learn. My vocabulary was smaller and developed slowly compared to my peers, which discouraged me from reading. Moreover, my mother’s metric for life was to pay the bills, so her interactions with me were short and unsupportive at times. She simply could not provide my siblings and I with the essential resources we needed to learn, such as a computer and books. Yet, what may appear to be deficiencies in my family, they are not. Instead, my upbringing is a source of strength and has given me the spirit to place one foot in front of the other, using love, hope, family, and purpose to reach another pinnacle in my life—applying to law …show more content…
For example, as a first generation Mexican American, I struggled to learn Spanish. When I encountered Spanish, it had been beaten out of my mother and filed in the “did not use” cabinet. As a result, she did not speak nor encourage me to learn the language. Moreover, I viewed Spanish as a liability and weakness because it made me feel un-American. Not to mention, Spanish separated me from my Mexican culture, at times acting as a source of ridicule and embarrassment because I did not comprehend it. Thus, learning a second language was an academic and psychological challenge for me because Spanish, like English, is complex. I have studied Spanish on high and subsidiary levels by learning the rules of grammar and punctuation. Further, I have studied different linguistic structures, which make up a sentence and how they work, where they work, and why they work as they do. Now, I can confidently say that I am fluent in Spanish and can have conversations with my mother in her native language. My assertive mentality and self-discipline to learn Spanish has allowed me to gain a better comprehension and command of English which is essential for any lawyer in the United