Changing Times: What One Will Do To Be Accepted
A few days ago I was talking with one of the foreign students who attends the same college that I do. He described the discomfort he is feeling trying to adjust to his new environment. The foreign student told me that it is hard for him to get used to the way people treat him just because he cannot speak the English language well enough. He said, "People are not patient with me and sometimes they just walk away before I can explain what it is that I want them to understand."This conversation reminded me of a time in my life that I too felt like an outsider. It was a time of great upheaval in my life and a time that would bring about change in not only the rural environment I was used to, but also in the way I looked at life itself. The time of innocence was coming to an abrupt end.Throughout my elementary school years I grew up in a very rural area of western Indiana. Days not spent in school were spent playing in the woods with my friend Craig, living out pioneer fantasies, making hay forts in the barn, or playing in the creek that bordered our small
Mom worked very hard trying to support six children on her own and I was too young to realize just how poor we really were. I did not make very many friends that school year and could not figure out why because I was fairly well liked at my old school. Tracy, the new man in mom's life did realize the severity of our financial situation. When I was nine years old my mother divorced my adoptive father, who was the source of the violence at home. I think he took me under his wing because he was originally from the south and my accent probably reminded him of home. The next three years I remember a problem free life, a comfortable life where I had not a worry in the world. I had become like many other lonely American youths, I had become person who would ride a road of self-destruction and all in the name of being accepted. The same people who treated me with such disrespect the year before now respected me for some reason. I missed the corn and soybean fields and the quiet of the country. The word "drugs" did not mean anything to me. This was my introduction to sex, drugs, hard rock music, and a new way of life. I could not get used to the new school system where they had three different grades in each classroom, most disturbing of all my classmates would make fun of the clothes that I wore and also of my Indiana hick/West Virginian accent. The next year marked the beginning of seventh grade and I had more friends than I could have ever imagined.
Common topics in this essay:
Mom Tracy,
Indiana Days,
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sometimes walk,
western indiana,
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Acceptance Essays
