Helena Kasunmu
Mr. Curtis
English
5 November 2014 How to Beat the Street Babe Ruth once said “Don’t let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.” When I think of this quote I think of the everyday situation I come across. Despite these situations I was able to step out of my comfort zone, and attack every problem vigorously. One of my finer qualities is my never dying thirst for knowledge. Where I’m from people make the supposition that I, an African American, will attend school, drop out, and be useless. However, they are sadly mistaken. Even though I live in a place where intimidating gangbangers or drug dealers roam the corners and police are looked at as interlopes, I didn’t let that shake or break me. As I grew up, I watched a lot of my grade school classmates inadvertently end up on the wrong side of the street. Unlike me, they weren’t resilient. They were susceptible to failure and just went with the crowd. I knew that wasn’t the best life, knowingly the struggle my parents went through to bring my siblings and me to America for a better life. Coming to America was one of the biggest steps my parent took for the betterment of my siblings and I. Being well established in Nigeria already, my parents had to start their lives over for us to have the healthier life than they ever could have in Nigeria. My parents are very strict on getting the proper education in order to be successful. As for my parents they did everything they could to financially upkeep us with the best education possible from paycheck to paycheck. These steps that they took made me truly understand that heroes aren’t just “super power” blasting people. Heroes are people that stand for their dreams of becoming whoever they chose to be. My parents are truly my superheroes, and instilled in me that the key to success is by the readiness of the mind. Between my mom and dad, my dad dealt with the most problem in this country. At the age of seven my father dealt with the death of his mother young boy my father. He was one of the eight kids his mother
