Personal Narrative: Coming To The US

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” true words that was once said by Laozi, an ancient Chinese philosopher and writer. The decision of leaving my home country, Egypt, at the age of 11, and coming to the U.S. definitely marks the start of that one single step- education. I knew that coming to the U.S. was a great opportunity for me to get a better education and thus a better future in my career. Even though I was very happy and excited, it was also a very challenging step in my life. Coming only with my father and my brother while leaving my mother and my two sisters back in Egypt was very difficult. The reason that they did not come with us was because my mother had to stay with my sisters who were studying pharmacology there. The first year for me in the U.S. was probably the
hardest and most challenging year in my whole entire life. I spoke very limited English during this year. I barely understood what was the person in front of me was even talking about. The teachers in school were great, and they tried every possible way to make me understand the lesson that we were learning. However, I always felt left behind in the classroom. I had no friends at all. Every time the teacher asks, “who doesn’t have a partner?,” I would always raise my hand. Another challenge that I encountered during my first year in the U.S.
was that I found myself missing the rest of my family and of course, my friends. However, I realized that I have to make new friends, and in order to make new friends, I had to learn how to speak the language. In order to learn English as fast as possible, I decided to read children’s books and pick out the words that I do not know. Then, I translated the words and tried to memorize and put them in different sentences. One year after another, I started to have more and more friends who gave a meaning to my life. One last challenge that I went through during my first year in the country was that I had more responsibility. Being totally on my own was not easy. I had to learn how to cook different kinds of food and how to behave and act without supervision. Even though it was very difficult in the beginning to rely on myself, it still made me confident about how much could I actually achieve. The only challenge for me after the first year was to academically do well and begin my journey of a thousand miles. Despite all the challenges, I decided that failure should never be a word in my
dictionary. During 7th and 8th grade, I wanted to achieve good grades and to prepare very well for high school. Especially during 8th grade, many of my teachers started to positively inspire me. For example, my history teacher told me something that I would never forget. He told me, “Look at your classmates around you. Some of them will be working for you some day.” This really inspired me to do even better in school and to spend most of my energy in my books. I realize now that every challenge that I went through- the language, the environment, the ability to make friends- had a significant impact on me and gave me self-confidence, something that has been missing in many people’s lives.