My parents were never the type to help me with my studies.

However, it was not their

choice. School being too far to go to every day and more important matters in the house caused

both of them to only finish elementary school. Once they immigrated from Mexico to America,

they had to work hard and never got the chance to study again.

In school, I would learn slower than all of the other students around me. My grades

weren't the best in elementary and middle school. There was no help I could seek around me.

Outside of my immediate family, no one had a college diploma, and the people who did have a

good education were too busy for me.

I learned to use online resources as a supplement to my classes. There were many videos

on youtube of people going through math problems at every level for people to learn. I could find

already-made flashcards for my social studies classes. Definitions for every word I could

imagine were readily available to me.

Doing all of these searches helped me learn faster, and more efficiently. I searched

through all of the videos on a topic quickly and choose the best one for me. I learned to know

which sources are reliable and I easily found alternatives to corroborate answers with. The many

shortcuts google has also helped tremendously. You can search for a specific file type, or exclude

a topic that you don't want from any result.

After taking the extra effort to study at home with online resources, my grades soared. I

was able to achieve straight A’s throughout high school and I kept getting better at learning

quickly. As a result, I was also able to memorize more with less time which prepared me for

many tests and quizzes.

 These research skills are essential to what I want to achieve later in life. Programming

consists of a lot of learning, as you're never truly done. The many searches I made towards my

educational abilities unknowingly taught me how to search for solutions in programming.