I have overcome a lot in my life, and I have failed just as much. I moved in with my Aunt Shari and Uncle Steve when I was eleven years old. I remember coming home every day from school wishing that I was normal, and the kids would never stop asking me why I lived with my aunt and uncle. The more I have grown older now, the more I realized there are more benefits for being abnormal. I am a strong willed and soft hearted. I am a person with a gray personality, and know that some things are more complicated that what society lets us believe.

In the sixth grade I was learning at a third grade level. It was a very stressful time for me just moving in with my aunt and uncle, but my aunt said the only way that I would be able to graduate with my class mates in six years, is too work my butt off and study as hard as I can. I don’t know if it was my desire to be considered normal in my peer’s eyes, or wanting to make my aunt and uncle proud. I desired both, because I never had both before. The next year I started school at a sixth grade level, and by the time I reached eighth grade I was at the same grade level with my peers. I have been with them though this whole school system ever since. I think that is the goal I am most proud of. I do what has to be done, and I do it with all my ability.

After many people in the school system said I would never make it past, or even though high school, which at one point seemed like an impossible goal, I will now be graduating in May of this year. After being accepted into the University of Nebraska at Kearney, and Mid-plains Community College at North Platt, I wish to pursue my short term goals buy studying hard in college, and working on my pre-nursing courses. I am also organizing our FFA horse judging team for our contest in May.

In the next ten years I hope to be a really great nurse working either in an ER or OR care setting. I wish to raise a family to the values of tough love, hard work, success, family, and faith. I hope that my immediate family and I will be closer than we have been in the past. I wish most of all that I will never lose my way in life, and always look for new expectations.

My aunt and uncle have been, wonderful examples to me this past nine years. They have taught me one thing that I can take with me anywhere I go. What whatever job you have do it to the best of your ability, because it is better than no job at all, and someone may come along and be more capable than you, at the job. Even if you walk past a side walk with weeds growing through the cracks, pull the weeds and make the place better than the state you found it.