When I was born I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis and later on in my life I was in ELL (English Language Learners) and special ED. Osteoarthritis is genetic from my family. Having osteoarthritis wasn’t the best thing to have because it meant I couldn’t do any sports that I wanted to do. Since I was little my dream was to be a soccer player but my dream couldn’t come true because of this disease. I remember the day I found out I had osteoarthritis. I was playing soccer with my friends the whole day and later that night my knees were in pain, inflamed, and were red so the next morning I went to the doctors. When I got there, they were surprised that a teenager has osteoarthritis because it’s not common. That was when they told me that I had to be careful or I would face the consequences.

How has this affected me? This started to affect me when I started elementary. This has affected me because I was very gregarious but the kids in the regular classes thought I was special since I was in special ED. People treated you very different and I didn’t like that. I remember that in elementary and middle school I barely got bullied but I hated how people only remembered me as the kid in special ED. So when I noticed this was happening I promised myself to get out of special ED. All throughout my elementary years I was in special ED and kept surviving and surviving up till middle school that they decided to let me go. That day was a great day to know that I don’t need those classes anymore.

Another reason why they treated me different was because of ELL. My first language was Spanish so that didn’t help me. When school started, it was stressful because everything was in English. What made it harder was that no one talked English in my family so I had to learn by myself. I felt like a foreign exchange student that had to learn a new language.

All in all, I had to study extra hard to succeed in my classes. The secret to my success was just to believe in you and to never give up. After all the hard work I put in elementary and middle school I finally got out of special ED and ELL classes. I finally felt that I was a normal throughout this adventure. I’ve finally achieved my goal and I hope to achieve more goals in the future. If you work hard to achieve what you want you’ll eventually achieve your dream.