Valdez 1

Luis Valdez
English 113A
Professor Lawson
1 October, 2014
Final Draft
Word Count: 2038
The Great Book
Yo vine a superarme, I came to make myself better, I would tell myself in Spanish back in
elementary school when things got difficult. It got tough a lot of times, because I came from a
foreign country, and did not know a single word in English. I failed my first state tests, because I
didnt have an idea what anything said in the tests. God it was tough, not just being unable to do
my work but also seeing other classmates put in half the effort I did and finishing up in no time.
Sometimes even other classmates tried to make me call myself stupid things in English to make
me look stupid. If I had friends or not it didnt matter because yo vine a superarme.
It was in 5th grade that I first broke into tears in front of the whole class. My teacher got
in my face and screamed at me in front of the whole class. If it was legal Im sure he would have
punched me. He was mad because I hadnt learned English yet, in those eternal seconds when
everyone had their eyes on me, I felt like the worst student in the world. The tears ran through
my face like rivers after a rain. He then escorted me outside the classroom with a translator to
scream at me even more to make sure I got the point of what he was trying to say. My teacher
lost his patience with me, but overall lost me. I understand he was trying to make himself clear,
but screaming at a kid in another language in front of an entire classroom just isnt the solution. I

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graduated 5th grade with high honors of most improved but I honestly it felt like a ribbon to the
kid who finished last in the race.
Shortly after my graduation I began summer school. It was there too that I broke into
tears again. This time no one got in my face; but this time someone got under my skin. His name
was Sam; he was the clown of the class. Often he would talk back to the teacher and a lot of time
he got in trouble. I thought of him as a person with special needs, but it was frustrating being in
the same class. Not because of his personality, but his lack of trying in class or putting in effort
into anything. Then one day while working on math work, my favorite subject, I began to have
trouble with it. There were a lot of sentences on the worksheet that certainly had to do with math
but I could barely understand them. I would have asked for help from my teacher but she was
busy with other students. Then Sam passed by with a mocking smile and showed me he had
already finished the work. There I was, a math lover, not being able to complete a simple
worksheet and him finishing it without a single drop of sweat. It was so unfair, I had worked so
hard yet it wasnt enough, I cried in front of the whole class. It was stupid, a kid crying because
he couldnt finish his work. However that gave me fuel to not just learn English, but to do
beyond my best to keep up with others, it was then that it was clear to me that yo vine a
superarme.
Middle school came and I was ready for anything. I made a few friends in my English
Second Language class; they had all been here in the U.S. a lot longer than I had. Fall after fall I
learned to not just pick up myself but to run even faster after every fall. My English teacher in 6th
grade was mad at me because I had misspelled English in my portfolio, and yea it was
embarrassing but that didnt slow me down one bit. I knew I had to be better than anyone
because if not what was the point of being here in this country. In 7th grade I was still in ESL, my

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math teacher wanted me to go on to the higher class the following year but I couldnt because I
was still in ESL. He told me his plans for me and once again it was up to me to either cry or pass
my ESL tests with high grades. And so it came to life, my dreamed that had begun in 5th grade
was finally here, I was in the regular English class, and my math class was one of a high school
level. To make things even better I passed my friends from ESL since most of them were still
there. It was implanted in my head, yo vine a superarme y lo logre, and I accomplished it.
Middle school had been an amazing experience for me starting from the bottom of an ESL class
to finishing up in not just Honor English classes but even the highest math level course. I had
reached the top of the roller coaster; great view to the city was in my eyes. Little did I, as a kid,
know we were about to go down.
It was in High school that I lost my ambition to make myself better and to go further
away from what people expected from me, I became a careless kid. 9th grade English class was
easy, get there on time, get a newspaper, shut up and read. It was an easy solid A to the class.
While math class was even better for the careless kid in me, he became the clown of the class
and passed all his tests without even studying or trying really. At the end of the year the kid
passed his classes with Bs. A tiger was slowly gaining up on the fastest zebra yet he had no idea.
10th grade was the twist in the roller coaster; the kids English class was full of clowns with a
teacher who had no control over the class whatsoever. What was the teachers remedy? Reading.
She threw the students a couple of 500 page books to keepem busy if not, you simply didnt
pass the class. We also had to answer a packet of questions to show we had read, but little did the
teacher know those questions on the packet were all online. The entire class got the answers from
the internet. The teacher probably knew about it but it kept us busy and got her through another
year, solid B for that kid. Math was a little tougher, not academically but with the teacher. The

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teacher was always late, this didnt piss off the kid but the fact that she didnt care about it, she
would justify she had to get her coffee from the cafeteria across campus. Another teacher would
have blamed traffic, or living far away but my teacher justified she just had to have her coffee.
The kid learned to live with this; it was free time! The fact that she was late wasnt really what
bothered me, it was her lack of caring about us, and aside from being late she constantly would
lose our work. Regardless of everything once again the kid passed his math class. Here in high
school the kid had achieved everything without really trying, he had gone half way through high
school without being academically challenged. In his eyes he had done everything to superarse,
make himself better.
Up to 11th grade the kid had managed to go through his high school classes without any
commitment or engaging in any subject. Until one day in October his English teacher began the
class by showing them videos of the 1920s along with pictures and explanations of life styles of
that era. It was all so stupid at first, learning about flappers felt as if in a hundred years kids
would learn about swaggers of our time. Our English teacher then informed us we would read
The Great Gatsby in class, in that second I was upset because I hated reading, nevertheless she
made us also complete a questions packet to show we had read and once again the packet and
answers were found online by classmates. Shortly after that she found out and instead had us
writing about each chapter of the book. I was behind most of my friends who actually did the
work and when I asked them where they were in the book, they told me in the part when they are
buying a dog. Why the hell would I want to read a book that talked about people who had died
long ago and somewhere within its pages talked about them purchasing a dog? For some
extraneous reason I began to read the book. Chapter by chapter our teacher would inform us of
the meaning behind every chapter. The book wasnt about a romantic story in general but it was

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the story of a man who had done everything possible to better himself. He had gone a separate
way from his parents and that reminded me how once I too left my parents and migrated there to
the U.S to learn English and to learn the ways of the land of the freedom. Since Gatsby was little
he had it implanted in his head to be something way beyond his reach and then I remembered my
goal when I arrived here to make myself better. The moment that shocked me the most came
from the film interpretation. The scene when Gatsby was talking with Tom and he tells him, My
life has to be like this, its got to keep going up. Immediately I saw myself in Gatsbys shoes, as
he had the mentality of being something beyond what he had already accomplished. By the end
of the book we realized as a child he had a list of things to do through the day which all related to
self-growth and through the book metaphorically he was pursuing the American dream. Daisy
from the book was his American dream. It all made sense, why our teacher had given us a
background of the era of the book at the beginning of it. That kid that hated to read realized that
he hadnt bettered himself in years, he realized there was much more in life than passing a simple
math class in 8th grade, he realized had had merely adopted the keys he needed to be successful
in every aspect of life. It was in 11th grade that I stopped being that careless kid and my
thirstiness for success came back to me.
Luckily enough that year to my math class began to ask much more from me than just
doing the classwork. There I had to actually study, something I had never done before. It felt like
everything from middle school came back, and along with that a race to beat my friends in my
math class. Through the year I accomplished finishing my second marathon beating my previous
time and in church I even became a confirmation leader. In school the race with my friends was
tough for all of us, we felt math was the easiest subject in the world the previous years but here it
required more, but like I had already done it once I persuaded my dream like Gatsby did and

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passed the class, this time with a C but my friends had failed so in a way I succeeded like I had
back when I began 8th grade. In my senior year I enrolled in AP courses unlike my friends that
sticked with the easy classes. I became the administrator for my churchs retreat and once again
completed a marathon. That same year I was nominated as the schools outstanding athlete, all
under the ideal of persuing my American dream like Gatsby did and dedicating myself to not just
school work but to the learning of school and the community around me. Now that I am in a 4
year university I know that vine yo superarme y aun no he acabado, I came to make myself better
and Im still not done.

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Works Cited
The Great Gatsby. Dir. Baz Luhrmann. Perf. Leonardo DiCaprio. Warner Bros, 2013. Film.