Potential Deal Breakers

    I feel that in college, there are many potential deal breakers. Many of which may or may not relate to one another. But either way, even with those deal breakers, I'm still here. One of the deal breakers I had to face was, well, the fact everything was so expensive. Each class is about forty six dollars a unit along with all the books and gas that are needed to attend classes. All of which in two semesters could cost well over a thousand dollars. With all that accumulated in the time span of two years or more, more and more money will have to be spent on classes and books alone. That's a lot of money, with this in mind, you could probably just drop everything and just start working. I had this in my mindset in the beginning, but with the way I was raised, I decided to go through with college. Even though it's expensive, it will all be worth it in the far future if I am able to get a good job. With that potential deal breaker of possible money issues, Sara from Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska, had to struggle day in and day out with her money issues. At one point she had no money to afford food for herself. She worked as an ironer, ironing clothes, but as she began daydreaming about her mother's home cooked food, she forgot about her job. Consequently, she burned the shirt and had to get three dollars deducted from her five dollar pay. Sara, already in a money pinch,  could not say anything it was "either [ . . . her] job or pay" (224). Going to college and working part-time is a harsh experience, especially since you have to pay for not only college, but your living expenses. In this era, jobs were scarce and if something were to happen, you would not be allowed to complain. If you did, then the boss would happily find you a permanent replacement for your leave. When you can barely afford college, what can you afford to eat? Can you live off cup noodles and bread for four years or more? With Sara's case, she was only able to afford bread, when "three dollars out from [her] wages, when every fraction of a penny was counted [. . .] Maybe for weeks [she'd] have to live on dry bread to make up for the loss" (224). Sara had to suffer with all these hardships for several years, but in the end it was all worth it. She could now afford anything she pleased, a house, food, and clothes. All of the material items she had ever wanted as a student is now within her grasps. So what I'm trying to say is, with a little hard work and a LOT of perseverance, money will no longer be a problem.
          Another deal breaker was time management. As a person of the working class, this is rather hard to manage, taking three classes in the summer and working for my parents right after is not an easy matter. Now I'm not saying that my life is harder than anyone else's it's just that, if you work and study, you should be able to understand this struggle. Aside from working, I am also swimming for a private team on the side of that as well, so with classes, work, and sports, I tend to fall behind on homework. But I cannot give up on any of them, without the classes I would not able to graduate and transfer to four year institution. Without swimming, I would be super stressed about school and work with nothing to blow off my steam and keep in shape. And of course, I can't stop working, how else am I going to pay for college? All of these things cost time, money is important, but "time is of the essence."In the beginning of summer, I was thinking about dropping my English 1A course because of the time commitment needed to write essays and reading books. It was too much for me in the beginning, I had to read the book within a night and write out a six page paper minimum. With that in mind, I had to do homework while on break at work. The first assignment was due the next few days, but I had barely written anything down at all. I was just about to give up, when my father decided to say that he would be able to change my work schedule so that I could be given more time to do my homework. Now I work twice as long on the weekends, but at least I have time to do my homework on the days when school is in session. With that, I was able to write a nine page paper in one night and later compose a sixteen page paper right after that. Even with my schedule, I was able to procure enough time to do such a thing and find out my capabilities. In a book, Breaking Through by Francisco Jimenez, a young boy, the author, and his family are illegal immigrants trying to make ends meet in America. Later in the story, the hardest working person, the family, dies. The burdens now lay on top of Francisco, having to work three jobs and study at the same time for high school. It goes to the point where he had to read an article why sweeping the floor at three in the morning in a janitorial job. Working to support a family and having to go to school are very harsh on a young fifteen year old boy, especially since the family isn't "legal." But with his perseverance he was able to go to Santa Clara University and become a successful author. Even if it seems hopeless, keep pushing onwards because you will never know where it will take you.

         The last deal breaker that I had to deal with was with the lack of confidence I had in myself. As time goes on, people become smarter, faster, and even stronger. Expectations grow and cause people to feel lesser of themselves when comparing themselves to other people. With new advances in technology, one must now find something that is even more technologically advanced, and this of course is not a simple task. A couple of years ago, the times in swimming for JO's or Junior Olympics, had always been in my grasp. Time after time, I would keep on making the time standards and feel proud of myself. But not soon after, as I grew older, the time standards became harder and harder to accomplish, pretty soon I was no longer making the cuts for the Junior Olympics. A fifty-three second one hundred free short course was not going to cut it because now there are people who are able to swim forty-six seconds one hundred yard free. My confidence had dropped considerably. Obviously this has nothing to do with education, but what I'm trying to say is that, standards are always rising. Those who already struggle cannot compare to those who always succeed. As you lose more of your confidence, you begin to doubt yourself. When that happens, quality of your work ethic also begin to drop and causes you to give up entirely because of your failures. As Chris states "I read somewhere... how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong... to measure yourself at least once."(127). Rather than moping around in your own failures, you can always try the opposite and look at your successes. Even the littlest of success can get you right back on your feet because it is an inspiration to reach higher. With a small success you aim to make an even bigger one. With the growing successes that attempt to achieve, an inspiration will grow and cause you to regain your lost confidence. In the movie of Into The Wild the narrator says something that catches my attention, Chris' confidence allowed him to accomplish a feat that many people cannot do. "That's what was great about him. He tried. Not many do." Confidence allows you try and attempt, without it we do not bother. Chris on the other hand had such great confidence that allowed him to experience different feelings. Because of that, the low confidence deal breaker did not affect him.