Personal Statement

Obstacles are meant to be overcome, what do not kill you just make you stronger. The
greatest obstacle I have ever faced in life and in my studies is myself. Some times one gets in the
way of doing things. Growing up I never felt love so I did not know how to show it. I was the
fattest kid in my family including my cousins and I got tease so that made me harden up on the
inside to protect myself. On the outside I may look like a happy kid who laugh when was teased
but on the inside I felt under love and underappreciated and no one knew what I was going
through.

The worst part of the whole situation was that I was being called names in school but when
you would have thought that would stop when you get home you would be wrong, because when
I got home I was still being called names by my own family that what hurts the most. A mother
is suppose to love you despite your appearance, your grades, how you dress or how you speak,
that was a definition of how I thought a mother was to be like. Contrary to that belief my mother
was totally different to that, all she cared about was who got the good grades, how you dress,
how you speak and also your physical appearance and if you do not satisfied her standard she
would make a comment like this ‘ what have I done to you to make you look like that I’m
working to hard for you to get grades like this tell me what I have done to you” or another
comment is this “ you are not coming behind me dress like that or why don’t you loose weight
then you would look good in that dress.”

I admit that I did not do well in my examinations, I only got six out of seven pass, but
instead of encouraging in me she compared my grades to my sister, my cousins and also her
goddaughter. When she did that I had a lot of anger building up and I did not say anything I kept
everything to myself. I went on to form six, first of all the school I went to did not have the best
teacher I said this because my Form six pure mathematics teacher was always out of the country.
So we barely saw him and when about two weeks from examinations he came and try to rush
everything down and was angry when we did not understand the work bare in bare in my that we
had to come to school on Saturdays and Sundays because of this. Another teacher who I find did
not teacher the work was my lower six sociology teacher. On the first day of class she told us
that she had twenty-eight days of sick leave and that whole class that day was dedicated to that
topic and she was always absent from school or she would come to school and did not come to
class. Another teacher was my lower six teacher the thing about her was that she now came out
of university and she was not sure of herself because if she gave us a problem to solve she would
have to ask another chemistry teacher if the answer she gave us was right.

These three teachers I complain about to my form teacher, my dean and also the school
principal and they did nothing until a parent wrote a letter to Ministry of Education about the
sociology teacher and then something was done when we enter upper six but it was too late the
damage was done where majority of the sociology students failed and everyone from the
chemistry class had failed and majority of the pure mathematics students had failed. Things were
totally different in upper six because they replace the chemistry and the sociology teachers, but
the thing about this situation was that I blame the teachers for my failure to pass my examination
but the only one to blame was myself because I let the problem of the teachers not teaching me
be the problem instead of me actually taking the text book and teaching myself. I did not do well
on my upper six examinations also and I was afraid to show my mother my results and I was
crying and my friend came up to me and asked me what the problem was and when I told her
that I was afraid to show my mother the results she asked me how many pass my mother had for
CXC and I told her three. She also asked if my mother did cape and I told her she never did cape.
She told me that well your mother has no reason to complain because you did well in all your
examination.

On hearing this it was like something open my eyes and my mind because all I was studying
was competing with my sister on who could get good grades instead of loving the subjects
because I used to love chemistry and now all I was studying was to see if I could beat everyone
in my class. At the end of it all I realised something all the time I spent trying to prove to my
family especially my mother that I was a smart child, I could have use that time and energy to
really push myself. You may be wondering well she was trying to prove that she was smart then
how come she did not get good grades? Let me further explain something yes I was trying to
prove something but I needed to learn that I am my own person that I was made unique and
instead o realising that I was trying to become somebody I am not and instead of blaming the
teachers and my parents and also my sister I should be blaming myself, because I was an
obstacle that was preventing myself from reaching my full potential.

The reason for applying to St. George’s University is because when I was looking at the
brochures and watching the pictures of the school and where it was located I felt a calm come
over me and that’s when I knew that St.George’s University was the school I want to attend.