The Importance of Education

            In the beginning of sixth grade my whole life changed forever.  My family had been going through some financial problems and we struggled. It was during this time my father had also left but his leaving helped me more than it destroyed me.

            My grandfather grew closer to death and he wanted to see my father before he died. He lived in Mexico and my father also came from there but he didn’t have American citizenship. My father knew that if he left to Mexico he wouldn’t be able to come back like he had done in the past. Knowing all the risk that came with leaving, my father left our family and he didn’t think twice about it. After he departure my family went down a huge spiral. My mother, sister, and I all went into depression and our financial problems grew worse. I began to lash out I stopped going to school, I didn’t eat and I abandoned my schoolwork.  I didn’t become depressed due to my father’s absence I became depressed because my family didn’t seem like a family anymore. My family grew distant from each other and we always argued. Life appeared hard for us and it seemed that it would only get worse.

            School for me during this time was absolutely appalling and I would act sick so I didn’t have to go. When I did go to school I would go on the days that we had to take a test and I would fail them. School was least important thing to me and I really didn’t care if I passed or not.

After a couple of months my mother decided my siblings and I had to move to El Paso with my grandparents. My grandparents, a strict, grumpy couple, expected me to have good grades. To please my grandparents got the grades they wanted but I didn’t learn the importance of education until some years later.

            My freshmen year became a turning year for me. I began to think about how my life came to be and how it had changed. I didn’t understand why God had shattered my family and why I had to live in stupid El Paso. I soon realized that without all the bad things that happened to me I would have never received the opportunities that I did in El Paso. If my father stayed I wouldn’t had received a proper education because the high schools where we lived at were awful. If my father stayed I wouldn’t have moved to El Paso where I cared more about my schoolwork. If my father stayed I would had never realized my own potential that I had and where it could take me. While living in El Paso I learned that education was something that I should take advantage of and that it is the most important thing. Sometimes behind all the bad things that happens to you there is something good waiting.