My family moved to New Hampshire from Uganda, the very center of Africa. We came to America with a goal to search for better lives since it is a more advanced first-world country. Living in Africa for the first years of my life had a significant impact on who I am. It impacted my morals about making the most out of the opportunities I am given.
It takes either a lot of money or luck to be able to come to America if you are from where I was in Africa. So, it was special that my family would be able to come to America. When getting the chance to go to America, since it was an honor, people from my town in Uganda and your family expected you to do remarkable things while in America. Otherwise, you wasted your opportunity. That is one moral that has stuck with me throughout my life, because I do not want to disappoint the people who did not get the same opportunity.
To make the most of this opportunity that I was given, I realized college was the goal to reach for. Early in elementary school, I decided that college was my path, which was also my older siblings’ intended path. My mom is my biggest inspiration because she has always worked so hard to provide for my family. She wakes up every day an hour or two earlier before she had to go to work to make food, making sure my siblings and I have plenty to eat. She would
work overtime when her job would give her the chance. She often called to tell us that she was going to come back later leaving my siblings worried till she came back. My life goal is to someday repay her for all she did and continues to do. As young as I can remember I have always desired to be highly successful which is my way to repay her. I want her to retire as early as she can so she can enjoy the greatest number of years possible without working and enjoy life.
College is the one step that guarantees the most chances to be phenomenally successful in life. No matter what I was doing, I have always had the goal to go to college in the back of my mind. I worked hard in school to make sure I could get into a lot of colleges with several scholarships. I knew that getting into good colleges is not just going to come; you must plan for it. I definitely had a plan to do well in school and I was keen on executing it. In my middle school, it was not necessary to excel in your class because it did not go on your permanent school record. Most of my friends did not really try in middle school. But with my goal in mind to build my college resume I took middle school as practice for when I go to high school. I made a goal to get good grades in middle school even though it did not matter. What I believe is that if I can get into the good habit of getting good grades down in middle school, I would already be ahead in high school if I had established those habits.
My ability to succeed in high school got me into one of my top schools, Boston College, which I got accepted into in an unusual way. It required that I would first have to attend another college before I can go there in my second year of college. My consideration when I was doing my college applications was that I did not want to go anywhere too far from my family, so I applied to colleges mostly in New England. I also applied to all the in-state colleges to make sure I get the benefit of in-state tuition. My plan was to go not only to the top college that accepted me but also to the one that gave me the most money to go to school. College
is important but also you must approach it in a smart way. The dumbest thing you could do is to go into a lot of unnecessary debt when there were cheaper options. Since I had to wait till my sophomore year to be able to attend Boston College, I had to look at my other college options and decide what would be the cheapest option to go to for that first year.
The college decision is always going to be a tedious process for most people with a variety of important aspects to consider. The most crucial factor, at least for my first year, was cost. I made the decision to go to the school that gave me the best financial package to save as much money as I could for my first year. Keene State College’s financial package was a good option so that for my first year I would not have to pay any money out of my pocket and even better my parents’ pockets. Another school also gave me an identical financial package. But what made me choose Keene over that school was because it was 5 hours away from where I live, and Keene was only 1 hour away. I also chose Keene because of another important aspect of which I would be able to join and compete on their track team. I always wanted to do track in high school but there were just things that got in the way. Most years it was because I wanted to work instead. I finally signed up to do track my junior year but, in my head, I planned to quit because I just took a two week break from my work. Those two weeks were just a trial for participating in track. I did in fact quit and my junior I made a lot of money by choosing not to do track. Senior year I found a more flexible job after. With this new flexible job, it allowed me to finally be able to do track my senior year because I was scheduled to work after track practice. I did one season, so I did not get to run many races. I really enjoyed the season, and I had potential to be decent at track if I put more time into it. I have always had great stamina playing soccer my whole life. I would not get tired quickly when playing games or practicing. Stamina is important when it comes to running track and if I trained to improve my running form with the gifted stamina I had I could see how good I can become at running. This missed opportunity got me to want to do
track for more years at school, but it was my final year in high school. I was interested to see if I could walk on to any college teams. Keene was not at that advanced of a level like other division one colleges that accepted me that it would be virtually impossible to walk on. The fact that there was more of a chance to continue doing track at Keene became a big reason to come here.
Jozuwe Tunguru can be contacted at
