A Sporadic Education

January 30, 2020 The University of I Don’t Know Yet 100 University Way Somewhere, Texas 10000 Dear Admissions Counselor: My mother had a sporadic education at best, the result of moving back and forth from Mexico to Texas. When her mother died, she quit school for good at age fifteen and raised her siblings instead. My mother always wanted more for her children. No matter what people said about us being bastards and mistakes, she drilled it into my head that the world was mine for the taking. I was never a good student, but I always loved learning. I am hardworking, ambitious, and sometimes unconventional. As far back as I can remember, I have never excelled at school- from elementary to high school. I remember crying in math while teachers yelled at me for slacking off. By the time I was in ninth grade I did not even bother writing my name on assignments. My mother often had to leave work so all my teachers could sit in one room and tell her how I was never going to get anywhere. In my junior year of high school, we discovered I had a learning disability that was never caught. I was glad to finally understand why school was so difficult, but my GPA had already been damaged beyond repair. No matter how low I felt after a report card, I knew could not give up on college. College held the key to everything I wanted and more. My parents divorced when I was two years old. They like to think it was peaceful, but I remember yelling waking me up from sleep and tears on both of their faces. I think divorcing was something neither of them wanted; they just could not figure out how to make it work. It killed me that I had no power to help them fix it. My parents lost parts of themselves that I don’t know if I will ever see again. My five siblings and I bounced around between parents for a while. Eventually, I stayed with my mother permanently. Mostly, I only saw my mother in the middle of the night, eyes tired, barely getting home from one of her many jobs. Since she was gone most of the time, I had to mature quickly. Even though I was the youngest of my siblings, I took on the role of the “housewife” from an early age. I was the cook, the cleaner, and the peacemaker. Making a little peace in my chaotic family was my biggest pride. I loved solving problems and helping the members of my family come to understand each other. Always seeing my mom exhausted made me want something better for myself. I was not sure what was going to save from this life, but I had to find it. I, later, figured out it was college. Although when I was younger I swore I was going to be a veterinarian, when it came time to choose a career pathway in high school, I knew I wanted two things in life: I wanted to pursue my passion in writing poetry, and I wanted to help people and families like my own. So, I decided to study psychology. I figured if the world was mine, I wanted to do something to make it a better place

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