Denominator Vs Family

I have always had a horrible relationship with fractions, similar to the relationship I have with life. The confusion of balancing the numerator and the denominator was similar to the confusion I have with balancing family and school. I come from a family with six children all raised by an immigrant single mother on government social programs. Welfare, Cash Aid, and Medi-cal were the only thing that was keeping my family going. Being on many social programs it really made me feel like a charity case, but I didn’t know what I could do to make a difference in my future. Until one random day in the second grade when I asked, “why do we have to go to school every day?” My teacher turned to the class and explained “we wake up every day so early in the morning to work for our future, to get good grades, and go to college and get well paying jobs.” That is the day I had received the most beneficial and essential information ever. That’s the day I learned education is the key to everything. Education was not something my mother stressed to my siblings and I when we were younger, but luckily I’ve always had a love and desire to learn and receive new knowledge. …show more content…
However, that didn’t mean that I was always really good in school because I still had trouble with fractions. Along with that, there was never a role model for sibling and I to look up to especially with my mother’s having a third grade education level. I come from a Somali culture where women look forward to getting married right after high school, rather than getting a college education. Their fraction would be marriage over school, resulting to more government social programs. At a very young age I decided that education is my number one priority. Every once in a while, I would caught myself thinking about my future and see what decision will most benefit me later on. I was determined to make something of myself, and help motivated others around. I didn’t want to be the only one in my family to get education, so I encourage my sibling to make school their first priority also. I will go to college, I will complete my education, and I will make a difference in both my family and my life. I guess it’s safe to say that today my fractions are school and family over everything, resulting in a bright future. Prompt 2 37 is a number that weighs heavily over my head. When I was twelve years old, my mother decided it was time for my siblings and me to meet her side of the family. The only two problems were her side of the family lives all the way in the Ethiopia, and we had no money. She was determined so she saved every penny that came her way and cut the tickets; the date was set. November 27, 2009 was the day I got on the plane to Africa. I was filled with mixed emotions, I was excited to see my home country for the first time, but I was also nervous of what my family would think of me. When we arrived to the front of the house or what I believed was a house, there was my grandmother standing there with the biggest smile on her face. Then my nerves began to ease and I was excited. Ethiopia was extremely different from America, which I was obviously accepting, but it was a good and bad kind different. It was good because it was very open, there were many different types of animals, and overall the biggest difference was there was neither electricity nor running water. It was also bad because since it is developing country there are many sick people and little to no sanitation. Africa is an experience that changed many views and opinions on life. I have always believed that education is the key to a successful future, but when I was in Africa all I could think about is how my mother, uncles, aunts, and cousins never got the opportunity to get an education like I did. Because I was blessed enough to be born in a country that provided me with so many different opportunities we are their only hope in survive. Now it all began to