Everyone wants the American dream right? The big house, the nice backyard, the two kids, and the good job.  I sat in my anthropology class while the issue of the American Dream was discussed.  My professor mentioned that America is a very stratified country.  This means that Americans are classified into distinct and separate groups based on their socio-economic conditions.  In addition, my professor mentioned that there is an “umbrella” in the classroom which prevents many from succeeding to their full potential and that this cycle leads to the huge gap between the rich and poor. Also, it was mentioned that these “success” stories which we love to hear, i.e the poor person who becomes a self-made millionaire through hard work and a ton of drive for success, we love to hear mainly because they are so rare.  Another comment I heard was that there are few people who acquire even an eighth of this success due to the fact that success isn’t something that isn’t earned mainly for the reason that our fate is very much determined by our economic and social surroundings.  I completely disagree.

It is true that the “well-off” kids who have a driver pick them up from and drop them off to school have it a little easier throughout their lives.  They can afford tutors, they can afford mistakes, they can afford standard exam prep, they have the tools for success presented to them at a very early age but that does not necessarily mean that they will all succeed, it merely means that they are more likely to.  I can say this with such confidence due to the fact that I have lived my life with this very idea planted in my head from an early age.  I grew up in East New York.  Now I think most people know that East New York is not like the Upper East Side and we have handball courts in place of tennis courts. But that didn’t stop me from learning how to play tennis, the viola, the cello, the piano, the guitar, traveling to Japan, Germany, Holland, Spain, earning my Associate’s Degree at the age of 18, and being en route to medical school.  My parents got divorced when I was 5 and my father preferred to spend his paychecks at the Showboat casino rather than on his own daughter.   Now I am not laying out my accomplishments in order to brag, because that is not my intention.  I’m not looking for pity or for praise, I am merely trying to point out that each one of us has the opportunity to succeed in life and it is mainly our character (and obviously the character of our influences), not our bank accounts that determine our place in society later on in life.  In addition, our personal experience in handling social pressures definitely plays a role in our prioritizing and in turn our successes.

I, with the help of my mother, chose to succeed in life regardless of my socio-economic status.  In addition to my own drive, I must mention my mothers tenacity to mold me into who I am today.  Having immigrated here in the early 80’s, she had to work twice as hard in order to get to where she is today all the while raising a daughter on her own in a foreign country.  Always encouraging me to aim high and to not stress those who chose to stay at the bottom, it stuck and I didn’t worry about following the crowd I worried more about leading it one day.  It wasn’t easy being the odd man out.  As a kid, going home right after school to study instead of spending the time hanging out at the local “spot” became more difficult as time went on, opting out of social events frequently because of a lesson, practice,an extra night studying for a test, going to sleep at 9pm or just plain ol’ practicing an instrument turned me into what some may call a “geek.” I didn’t worry about the clothing that I wore, nor how my hair looked or what people said about me because I knew that there was more to life than momentary satisfaction.  I knew that I couldn’t afford certain things but with hard work that one day I could.  I also knew that I couldn’t control my financial situation but I knew that I could control the choices that I made and the grades that I received. Each and every one of us has control over our thoughts and our decisions.  The situations that we are living in today are 90% our own doing and instead of making excuses about our lack of time, our shortage of money, our limited opportunities it is up to our own selves to get out there and make something happen for ourselves.