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third prompt (open-ended)

When I first set my foot on the foreign soil of the United States roughly four years ago, I did not know what to expect or what lay ahead of me. The only knowledge I had of this faraway country was merely a patchwork mosaic of Mickey Mouse, New York skyscrapers, and bright neon signs of Las Vegas I had seen on postcards or from movies. Yet I was excited at the prospect of coming to this new land, where, it was believed in my country, anything was possible. Even though only English I knew were some most basic greeting phrases, such as ¡®hello¡¯ and ¡®how are you,¡¯ I imagined that, despite my poor English, people would be sympathetic to my situation and try to befriend me. The cultural barriers also did not strike me as a real issue at the time, because I did not see why I would not be able to mingle with American kids.
However, the reality I faced on my first day at ***** Middle School and what I had imagined it to be were polar opposites. My first class was Algebra. The teacher told us to take out a pencil, but I did not even understand such a simple word. The student sitting next to me was kind enough to lend me one of his pencils, also telling me that another name for it was a ¡®dick.¡¯ I believed him and used the word whenever referring to a pencil for days. Everyone would laugh whenever I said it, but I thought it was simply because of my awkward accent. It wasn¡¯t until one of my teachers talked to me about my inappropriate language, did I learn what it truly meant. Besides my language difficulties, I also did not have a single friend. I was seen as the ¡°new retard¡± of the school and treated in a way that two-digit I.Q. kids were. The worst of it all was lunch, during when I would find myself alone on a bench, having no one to talk to or eat with.
I became more helpless and my life, more miserable. I desperately wanted to be accepted and welcomed, but there was so much to learn and so much to absorb. There was just so much about being American. However, for reasons I do not know, I have never once thought of giving up and just kept pushing my limits as far as I could. Come to think of it, I was in serious denial. In fact, it was the worst kind of denial: a denial of the fact that I was in denial. I knew things wouldn¡¯t change overnight and I would not become one of ¡°them¡± so easily, but completely disregarding my awareness of reality, I forced myself to think that I could reach that rainbow.
In about four years from then, I now sit at my computer, in my worn Levi¡¯s and Quicksilver, typing up my college essay while munching on a Big Mac. Thanks to my painstaking endeavors, I can say with confidence that I¡¯ve reached my 8th grade goal of blending in. I am also confident that I can adapt to whatever situation I might find myself in, in my days ahead. But now, I am all the more interested in developing this ability to grow and discover more about myself and this world. I truly thank the opportunity for the struggle I experienced as an immigrant, as well as the opportunity to translate that struggle into a metaphor for my own growth as a person. I feel it has given me a more flexible perspective than most of my American peers. And if anything, it certainly has taught me to double-check the name of things, before I could go around making a fool of myself.
(632 words)

By Poseidien (Poseidien) on Tuesday, December 16, 2003 - 08:41 pm: Edit

I think you really did a great job of expressing yourself and relaying how you felt at the time to your readers. Good luck!