I was brought up in an extremely poor family. My friends and I would sneak to a nearby rich neighborhood to have a feel of life on the other side. During the visits we could take advantage of the things we missed at home such as the swimming pool. Learning under such a poverty background was difficult since gaining a decent education required that one had the money to buy it. Let alone the challenges that came in between living and getting access to just the basic needs such as food, a decent shelter among others. Surviving in a poor background can minimize a child’s expectations of her life and result into a poverty cycle. As an a student taking a bachelor’s degree at university I have come to realize that what you put your mind into if you work towards achieving it, in the long run you will definitely have it.
In dealing with poverty, education is the key solution to it. It engages people in increasing skills and working out the solutions to their own problems, or as a community as a whole, or both. I have always believed that education is the key for the door out of poverty. Right away from my primary school I worked hard to get the education, but poverty came into my way as a barrier to my dream of living a far better than my family. My father was a drunkard and spent the little money he received from his manual jobs on alcohol. That left my mum as the breadwinner of the family. She did not only struggle to make the ends meet, but also put us in school. We were three children in our family. My mother worked as a cleaner in a nearby hospital before the low wage discouraged her and she moved out of the job to start a retail shop. After school and during the weekends, my siblings and I would help mum out with the selling at the retail shop.
My only hope for better life was education despite being trapped in poverty. Poverty is one thing that one can never get used to, but I had to accept reality. I demonstrated my ability to learn and be successful in life as this was my only way out of the poverty experience. I studied under a candle every night after a day in school. It was not such was not such easy to read in the dim light produced by the candle, but I had no choice but to do the homework assignments and read for the exams that promoted one to the next unit, or class. Before I could even sit down under the candle to study, I had to help my mother at the grocery as well as help prepare supper since I was the eldest child in the family.
According to McNally; “young people who grow up in relative poverty are much more likely to end up in similar economic circumstances later in life” (1). She therefore suggests that the future prospects of a community depend on how well the poverty issues are well addressed from a social justice perspective. Perhaps her thinking was the only reason that managed me to secure aid from the government and close friends. The government provided me with funding meant to benefit the disadvantaged pupils in school. The close friends provided me with moral support out of the knowledge that my dad was an alcoholic using his last notes in the pocket to buy cigarettes for his own pleasure. Some days he came home drank and that meant two things. Firstly, we could sleep hungry that night as he ate the food we prepared all by himself. Secondly, the school homework would not be done as he created an environment that I could hardly concentrate for five minutes before he came taking way the books and sometimes tearing them.
When it got into my mother’s mind that we cloud no longer put up with my drunkard father, she got herself a divorce and we moved out leaving him alone and his drama. At the time of the divorce I was joining high school. Being psychologically adjusted to the fact that life had changed and now we only had our mum took quite some time and this affected my studied greatly. My mother noting this, she took her time counseling me and making me understand why things changed. She encouraged me and I heed her advice. Poverty continued to be a main blight on my education and the progress of my family in general in different ways. However, I believed that education was my only key to success. I always gave priority to education.
In summary, I have come to realize that what you put your mind into and work towards achieving it, in the long run you will definitely have it. I am student at University undertaking a bachelor’s degree. I see this as a breakthrough and it gives me hope of a better life. Despite the poverty challenges, I believed my destiny and education as the road leading to it. Finding myself at such a high level of education I considered my family’s poverty problems solved.
Works Cited
Bartsch, Christine. "How to a self Reflective Essay." Global post 2013: n. pag. Print.
"BBC - Standard Grade Bitesize English - Personal experience : Revision." BBC - Homepage. N.p., 2013. Web. 1 July 2013.
Chavous, Kevin P. "Kids in Poverty Can Still Learn." The Huffington Post (2013): n. pag. Web. 30 June 2013.
"The Impact of Poverty on Education Conference." The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) - Scotland's largest teaching union. N.p., 2013. Web. 1 July 2013.
Kelton, Nancy. Writing from Personal Experience. F+W Media, Inc, 2000. Print.
