At some point of my life, I began to believe that I was an ordinary kid. It’s easy to feel beyond the ordinary when most of the people in my high school population can be very similar. Whether its race, family background or parents’ annual income, the students in Sharpstown High School don’t really know diversity. I didn’t know what diversity was. Things changed once I decided to be a part of a summer opportunity like Young Owls Leadership Program at Rice University, attending a college tour by HISD Emerge and participating in Youth About Business at Columbia University. To begin with, Young Owls Leadership Program was a summer opportunity that my Biology teacher recommended me for my summer of 2013. I’ve never been outside of home for a
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HISD Emerge is a program that I’ve been a part of since my freshman year. This program prepares low income high school students from Houston Independent School District to attend top tier universities or colleges of their choice. In June 2014, HISD Emerge takes uprising juniors and sophomores to a college tour in the upper east side of U.S. This five day tour allowed students to visit several campuses like Harvard, Brown, Northeastern University and many more. Throughout these five days, I began to associate with other students from different high schools and many had academic strengths. At the beginning, I was afraid to step in an Ivy League school because of my family’s background. I didn’t have two parents living with me and I didn’t have a perfect SAT score. Again, various people from the group were valedictorians, had a score of 2200 or above in their SATs, and went to competitive magnet school in the school district, but some had similar issues as I did. Some students did have immigrant parents and others knew what poverty was like at one point of their lives. As we visited the college campuses, I learned that in life, others will have an advantage in their education, but it’s not where we come from that defines us, it’s our actions that will define us. My fear and my insecurities no longer overpowered
HISD Emerge is a program that I’ve been a part of since my freshman year. This program prepares low income high school students from Houston Independent School District to attend top tier universities or colleges of their choice. In June 2014, HISD Emerge takes uprising juniors and sophomores to a college tour in the upper east side of U.S. This five day tour allowed students to visit several campuses like Harvard, Brown, Northeastern University and many more. Throughout these five days, I began to associate with other students from different high schools and many had academic strengths. At the beginning, I was afraid to step in an Ivy League school because of my family’s background. I didn’t have two parents living with me and I didn’t have a perfect SAT score. Again, various people from the group were valedictorians, had a score of 2200 or above in their SATs, and went to competitive magnet school in the school district, but some had similar issues as I did. Some students did have immigrant parents and others knew what poverty was like at one point of their lives. As we visited the college campuses, I learned that in life, others will have an advantage in their education, but it’s not where we come from that defines us, it’s our actions that will define us. My fear and my insecurities no longer overpowered