Previous academic performance may indicate how an individual is likely to perform in the classroom, but is by no means the only predictor of performance, as a one-dimensional …show more content…
This display of resiliency has been presented all throughout my life and remains ceaseless. On an extreme occasion in my life, I was without a home, living at the local laundry mat in my small town. I was poor, homeless, and only a seventeen-year-old junior in high school. Amid conflict and controversy where I grew up, I decided it was in the best interest for my future to go about life on my own, and I have been on my own since. Many people who knew me were confident that I would end up like most teenagers in my situation, a high school dropout or perhaps a prison inmate. Instead of allowing my life to devolve, I only became a better person. I finished the rest of high school performing very well academically and was even accepted into the University of South Dakota after I was told there was little hope of me making it into college. While at USD for my first semester, it became obvious that I would not be able to afford college. Without any financial support from others and working minimum wage jobs, I had exhausted all of my efforts to remained in college. Being in a state of hopelessness and feeling the burden of many disadvantages as a poor member of society, it was then that the roots of my sociological imagination grew. I had worked as hard as I could to get to where I wanted to be but encountered many road blocks. I currently work around twenty hours a week or so as a full-time student. I know that my academic performance would be better if it were not for the necessity to work so much. Despite all of my disadvantages, the resiliency I have consistently displayed has optimized my qualifications for the sociology Ph.D. program at