Seeing the Self in Context
Use the course tools to look deeply at struggles you or your family faced. Meet your reader where you were by acknowledging overly individualistic or ideologically shortsighted explanations you once had about your struggles. Use the course histories and concepts to reveal the larger context shaping these struggles. Write in a way that helps your reader feel less alone and oriented toward more hopeful horizons. As an option, you can write this essay to your past self.
Are You a Psychopath for Feeling so Low?
By Kyra Bautista
All of a sudden this mandated lock-down has made it harder for me to fall asleep. My thoughts are starting to become a big dark cloud that is following me around. What’s wrong with me? Why is this happening, go away. I’m starting to have recurring nightmares. I don’t like this feeling. I don’t want to fall back asleep and experience the pain again. I’m sleeping 3 to 4 hours a day, I can’t rest peacefully.
When the Cumbia Stops
By Anthony Sanchez
The cumbia masked the fatigue and exhaustion my mom would face at the end of every day. Cumbia was a way for her to cope with the labor she had to endure. It made it easier to work throughout the day as it brought her jubilation. While I was soundly sleeping, she was setting up for the next day. My mom would ensure my dad was taking his medication, help me with my algebra homework and manage our finances through budgeting wherever she could. While my dad was the reason we had a home, my mom is the one who cared for and maintained it. My mom is the gear behind the machine that keeps our family running.
Behind the Smile
By Gabriela George
26.4% of undergraduate females experience physical violence or sexual assault. Seeing this statistic was incredibly saddening, as I had not managed to evade this experience. Instead, I became a living statistic…However, my experience is not uncommon. Approximately, 1 in 5 women in college will experience sexual assault on campus. This egregious number has proliferated not because of the naivety of young women or their provocativeness enticing the wrong kind of person—it stems from the social expectations men have of women and how they should act. Yes, there are bad seeds and they deserve to be punished for their actions, but this speaks to a larger systemic problem.
The Freedom to Live
By Ali Kattee
What is freedom? Or what was that freedom in our eyes? This freedom that cost us way more than we could handle and took our home away from us. It was not something we could see but a sense of what others might have had across the Syrian border. It was a feeling of hope for a new and fresh start. The journey was difficult and unfulfilled for many. It is easy for stories to lose their impact when written in an essay however I hope to be able to leave an impact on you today.
Hate the Game, Not the Player
By Anonymous
In my frustration I press the question. “What exactly was wrong with letting her use the bathroom?” The response I receive feels as automated as my own voice when I’m at the register. “Nothing, it's just store policy.” Again, Chomsky’s words ring in my head as I recall my emotions during this conversation. “It's much easier to go along with the system than it is to resist it.” I let go of my hold on goodwill and common decency and let the raging current of the powers that be knock me back down to a place of complacency.
No Gold Mountain
By Derrick Lin
The notion of "Gold Mountain" that I heard of in my younger days was a myth. There was no actual gold to be found, but what I discovered was far more valuable. As a Chinese immigrant, I learned about the history of those who came before me and saw how their struggles were connected to my own.
Seeing Each Other
By Anonymous
These differences between us should not drive us apart, especially when we are family, but I’m sorry to say that sometimes it has driven a wedge between us and that is in part on me. I have yet to grow up in some ways and learn to not just treat you as a caregiver with no faults, but as a human being with their own ideas and opinions that I should do my best to understand and respect, even when I disagree with them. Especially when I disagree with them. Especially when the person I disagree with is someone that I love. So for the rest of this writing, I am going to be doing everything in my power to understand and respect your point of view when it comes to society and politics and vaccines and the pandemic.
Make Sure You Learn Your English
By Anonymous
The American interviewer turned his eyes to me and started asking what my name was and how old I was, and to which I could not answer because I didn’t have the speaking and listening skills at all. For a moment, I thought I messed up the interview, but the man smiled and I still vividly remember he said “make sure you learn your English”, then turned to my parents and said “congratulations and good luck with your life in America”
Fighting the Monster
By Anonymous
The unexpected loss of the most loving and charming person in my life completely changed my sense of belonging in this world. But what had the most profound and intense impact was what came later. Acknowledging the structural barriers that compromise any effort toward self-realization, happiness, and quality of life made me lose every bite of hope and sent me on a trip of no return to nowhere. Something started growing within me. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew this feeling was growing bigger and more powerful without any chance of stopping it. It was a monster that would soon take control of every aspect of my life.
Corporate Cannibal
By Anonymous
Blindly playing my part in American healthcare as a pawn for legalized criminals, the capitalistic corporate cannibals who ran my clinic. They salivate over large profits prioritizing them over people as corporations did in the gilded age. Patients and healthcare teams are their life support, exploiting our lives is their literal sport. The pandemic gave me a glimpse into how sinister corporate greed in healthcare can be. It gave me a chance to navigate the dark and twisted side of the healthcare system I one day hope to be a light in as a physician.
We Are Dust
By Holin Xue
Although it is claimed that time is like water in a sponge, it appears that no matter how I measure it, I can’t manage to locate an amount of space in which I can enjoy myself when I am weary of school and life. Other than grades, my brain is slow to process information. Because I am well aware that what I say is meaningless, that no one cares what I think, and that my viewpoints are not beneficial to others.
Lifting the Burden
By Anonymous
I kept trying to convince her that I was fine but little did I know I wasn’t. I was admitted to the emergency room. Soon after my arrival, I had blood work taken. I vividly remember laying on the hospital bed awaiting my results. Ten minutes elapsed, and after what felt like an eternity, the doctor walked up with a saddened facial expression. He muttered, “sorry to be the one to tell you this news, but you have type 1 diabetes.'
The Future Wrapped in a Plastic Bag
By Anonymous
When I was in middle school, once, my teacher asked me about my birthday to fill out some paperwork, but I did not remember it. So I had to call home to ask my mom. My teacher asked me if I was serious. Honestly, I did not know my birthday at the time simply because I just did not care about my birthday as my family never celebrated birthdays. I did not know my parents' birthdays as well. Once, when my close friend asked me about my parent's birthdays, I jokingly responded: “Well, how am I supposed to know since I did not give birth to them.” We were poor. Birthdays, holidays, and special events were like every other day.
Entangled Within a System
By Priscilla Cerrillo
The big family that I spoke of before, it had all broken a part by this time, after the market crashed, everyone had to look out for themselves, the days of weekly gatherings were gone. And it was okay, everyone needed to be with their families, but what happened when someone gets sick, or someone has a disability, or loses their job. We could no longer rely on each-other, instead we must rely on the system we paid taxes to. A system that will watch you die before stepping in and help. These were the years where I began to look back on my choice, and think, did I do the right thing? And for what? To live a life without meaning? But I would remind myself that life isn’t over yet, and the dreams I’m capable of, are still within reach.
On Becoming Aimless
By Isabel Cerna
The first part of addressing the problem of the rat race is realizing your participation in it, and giving yourself a break. Understand that you are not a failure because you are tired, or because you are not excelling at something the way you were told to. When you feel burnt out, or that you are heading in that direction, take time for yourself. Choose to take a nap, go on a walk, or do anything that makes you feel happy, and would reduce your stress. Be open to asking for help. It is very like that most of the people you are surrounded by feel similarly or have dealt with what you are facing.
Your Story Will Not be Forgotten
By Emily
I’m sorry. You have disappeared and I don’t think I can ever get you back. You’ve fallen into a fog and I can’t find a break in these clouds. It isn’t fair, I know. I am sorry your beautiful story is coming towards its end in this way. I wish for so much. I wish you were here and present. I wish I could tell you how much I appreciate everything you have done for me and our family. I wish there were some way I could go back in time and learn your secret recipes and dance in the kitchen with you. I’m sorry, this is just very heavy for me. I cannot even imagine what it is like for you, if only you knew.
Cutting off the Roots
By Sabrina Bojeh
I vividly remember walking to class after lunch when a guy I didn’t know… screamed “terrorist” at me. That was the start to my hatred and self-loathing towards my religion and culture. I slowly disassociated myself from anything that indicated who I truly was. I never allowed my hijabi mother near me in public as I tried to shy away a couple steps behind at malls and made her drop me off a block away from school. I never hung out with my noticeably Arab dad and lied to anyone who asked me what he did for work as he was the stereotypical Arab taxi driver. I never connected with my identity in any form and as far as I was concerned, I was a white American going as far as telling people that I was white and going to church with my friends on occasional Sundays. I repressed my ability to speak, write, and read Arabic. It even created a disconnect from my family back home in Palestine that called me Americanized and it felt as though I had no where I truly belonged.
An Unbreakable Legacy
By Keith Rockwell
Six years after the 2008 crisis had started it all. He lived victoriously against the system for so long, it is easy to look at his end as a defeat. While it ended in tragedy, I think of all the lessons he left to me and my sister as his victory, an unbreakable legacy that I will pass on to my own children, and they will pass on to theirs.
In a Colorless World of Competition
By Sana Haddadi
The race itself made me eliminate my hobbies one by one by trying to prioritize and focus on one thing, the race itself. I stopped playing piano after 7 years. All of a sudden all those talents and skills, seemed foreign to me. I started my days, with extreme panic attacks. I precisely remember asking my dad to place his hand on my heart so he can feel my heartbeats and what I'm going through. My heartbeats were faster than the race itself. I was getting the grades I was hoping for but the void inside me was never filled with the happiness of getting good grades. Meanwhile, the race never stopped for anyone. I found myself in a colorless world of competition.
Until All Whom We Love Are Free
By Justin
It is the summer of 2017 and you are in pain. It is a pain that takes place inside the body but cannot be fully described through mere physicality. I remember how it felt, like your insides were rotting, like a reoccurring metaphysical kick in the gut. You could never trace the pain so instead you just got used to it.
The Garden in the Machine, or a Failed Life Reexamined
By Anonymous
I was not in the military, had no drug addiction I fought to overcome, no career I pivoted from, no children I spent time raising and I have no accumulation of assets. I am in the eyes of the world, and most importantly in my own eyes, a complete failure. I do not enjoy revealing this about myself, I usually try my hardest to hide these facts, and it may make you uncomfortable to read, but I think my story is important because by investigating this it can reveal the symptoms of a larger problem in American society that keep people divided and isolated, overworked, and focused on a narrow view of what holds value.
False Idols of the American Dream
By Anonymous
Looking deeply at the American Dream, its promises and systemic pitfalls, my mom’s story can be viewed in a new light. The American Dream, as mentioned above, projects illusions of exuberant wealth as an attainable goal for every individual to set for themself. There are many who are systemically pushed away from this goal, yet still most Americans reach to gain what wealth they can and focus on their own triumph individually. My mom did rise above, but not by her own strength.
The Context That Shaped My Struggle With Anorexia
By Anonymous
There is a systemic issue that lies within society. The impact of mainstream media can be deadly. It is a very misunderstood disease and complex because it affects your body, spirit, and mind. Young girls see these 5’10” and 110-pound Victoria’s Secret models or the celebrities on the covers of magazines and think that’s how they should look. They are declared to be the most beautiful women in the world and sets unrealistic standards for women. Young girls see this as what they need to look like in order to be classified as beautiful or successful. This culture of praising the skinny, or toned women is unhealthy for society. It puts pressure on women to fulfill this unsaid criterion in order to love themselves. This stems from gender norms and the male gaze because women are placed under immense social pressure to maintain this gender order.
Hierarchy Hidden by Dreams
By Ryan Chan
After high school, I was able to see what my parents had wanted me to understand earlier in my adolescence. They had given me an opportunity to break out of poverty by providing me with resources to become well-versed in education so we could all one day live without financial instability. My heart sank as I realized how foolish and selfish I was all those years ago. They had given everything to me, and I was throwing that all away.
All He Got Was a Gold Watch
By Allan Prince
When I was about 12 years old, I overheard my dad talking with my uncle about financial difficulties that the company he worked for was having. They had taken on too much debt and were having difficulty keeping up with expenses. At that age, I didn’t really understand what it all meant. I was playing with my cousins so the discussions dad and uncle were having were just background noise to me. I heard him talk about this for a couple of years until one day; my dad came home with a gold watch that he had been given by his company. He said his company was sold to another company and he was no longer working there.
Healing Mental Illness
By Jonathan Durnford
I jolted awake on a concrete floor, heart beating rapidly to keep time with the pounding in my head, which was in no way helped by the glare of white lights overhead. My knuckles felt raw, my forehead dripped with warm blood. I had no idea how I got there, what transpired between the revels of my 24th birthday and the nauseating chamber imprisoning me. Leaning against the wall, confused and hungover, I reflected on the preceding years.
Your Golden Boy
By Nolan Golden
Let me begin by saying, I have a much deeper understanding of why, for all those years, you could never accept me for being an effeminate homosexual. It may sound silly, but the stories you told me growing up helped me garner a stronger sense of who you are. I’ve thought a about those stories a lot, of Adam and Eve; what it means to be a man; and of how good things would happen to good people and bad things to bad people.