And in the End, it’s Not the Years in your Life that Count. It’s the Life in your Years
“I” is something that can not be expressed in words, thoughts, or even in this essay that I am writing now. But writing this essay will only give a glimpse of who I really am. Expressing my thoughts through writing is going to help myself show the pain and the happiness that I experience through words. This is not a simple task as someone might think. Through the senses that I use most frequently; vision, taste and hearing.
Using all of the information from the previous semester, I have learned a lot about myself. I have learned what I need to improve as a writer and I have learned what aspects of writing I am good at. I loved writing my narrative essay about vision. I have found out that I really love helping people and I love listening to people through all of their stories and all that I have seen while I have attended the Work Camps that I have been on with my church. It was an essay that described all the hurt and pain that I had seen when I went to D’Iberville, Mississippi to volunteer with hurricane Katrina victims. I had traveled there with my church youth group and a couple of head people in the church. I had seen so much devastation there that when I went home any time my parents asked me how my trip was, there were no words to describe my feelings and all of the important life lessons that I had
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gained from the experience. During that week I had stayed with my work crew and we were in charge of cutting down trees that were harmful to the people who lived close to the damaged ones. We also went to a house to help a family move into that they had built after the destruction of the hurricane. My work crew leader was someone who I will never forget. He was in the Marines and he had gone to war multiple times. He had a ‘can do’ attitude that I really liked. He had a set goal and he never swayed from his intentions of helping the victims of the hurricane. He was someone that I look up to even now. He knew how to get the job done and he knew how to make the residents feel safe and secure while we were banging and cutting and scraping all of the bark and timber from the trees. I saw how he talked to the residents and victims of the hurricane with such ease and hopefulness. It made all of the victim’s pains and miseries melt away just like how butter melts on a hot and steamy pancake right off the grill.
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When we were helping the family move their furniture and personal items into the new house the mother of the family was crying the whole time. She told us to take a break from moving all of the heavy stuff into the other room. 
She made us take out a photo album that was hidden behind one of the older beds. This particular album looked like it had been through a lot of wear and tear through out the years. But we all realized that the damage was from the hurricane. The outside of the album had been worn on the edges and there was clear evidence of water damage. When we looked inside, all of the pictures were smeared with different colors from the damage of the hurricane. Some of the pictures even had mold on them from just being left in the album. She took her time going through all of her pictures saying who each and every person was, and if they were affected by the hurricane. She named at least 20 people who were in the album that had died in the hurricane. After each person she named who had passed away, I saw how hurt she had gotten as she went on further with each of the affected victims that were in the album. She started crying as she got to the last page because this particular person was her grandmother, who had been caught in the hurricane, had suffered greatly and had soon passed away. I saw her hurt and pain and I realized that I have never felt that way and I knew that I never wanted to either. Her cries were not only representing her pain and suffering, but ultimately it was symbolizing all of the victims of the hurricane and how they are dealing with the devastation in different ways.
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There were so many hurricane victims, who signed up to have our Work Camp come and help their family in any way, but there weren’t enough people and there wasn’t enough time for us to help everyone. It was so sad to see the people on the other sides of the street and the neighbors of the people that we helped not getting any assistance what so ever. Knowing that we were there and that we had the potential to help more but we weren’t allowed to help, didn’t settle with me. I wanted to go so bad and learn more from every victim, to understand their pain, know more about them, and what they were going through. By doing this I would be able to get a glimpse into their lives and I could understand their sufferings better so I could connect with them on a personal level. I realized that in the end that they didn’t want a new table, new paint, new clothes, or anything like that. All that they wanted was someone to listen to their stories and to just be their friend. I wanted to be that person that they sought comfort in and the one that they knew would be there for them.
While I was away at Work Camp, my parents had built a new deck on the pool that we had recently got. When I came back from Work Camp the first thing I saw at my house was my new, beautifully stained, deck. I saw all the details in the wood grain just at a first glance. It showed me the years and the obstacles that the tree had faced when it was going through its growing stage. I looked at the wood grain and saw the marks of struggle just like how I saw all of the details of the victims that I had helped in D’Iberville, Mississippi when I looked at them. I saw each individual problem, happiness, and confusion in them just like I saw every swirl, and line in the wood grain. Once I saw this I started to cry. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t know what came over me, but I liked it. It gave me a sense of humility and a sense of true vision and how I
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compared the two. I wasn’t grateful enough to get this beautiful work of art that was my deck. I realized there and then that I took a lot of things and a lot of people for granted. I now understood only a sliver of how people were hurting, and I went home to something that none of the victims would ever have like they had before. Going to Work Camp is an experience that I will never forget and I only hope that I have instilled some part of who I am in all of the people that I have touched through my experience at the camp. I am who I am because many of the trials and tribulations that I went through in Work Camp.
Another example of how I can explain who I really am through words is how I react with my family.
My grandfather is the most stubborn person that you will ever meet, ever. When he had his second heart attack I knew he wouldn’t listen to anyone about how he needed to take more pills and how he needed to change his diet, but actually change his diet and not just say he would. I saw how he thought that everything was going to be fine if he refused the treatment, but I knew that the reality was if he didn’t start changing his ways, he wasn’t going to be with us much longer.
All of my family members urged him to just listen to the doctors before he made any decisions, and he flipped out saying that they don’t know what’s best for him. But he needed to understand that taking this medicine and changing his diet will not only save him from the pain that he was being put through now, but ultimately having a lesser chance of having another heart attack that could cost him his life.
When he had his second heart attack, that same night he was suppose to see me in my last musical at Blairsville. He had always came to every one of my musicals, dinner theaters, district chorus, marching band, county band, banquets, and this would be the first thing that he ever missed. I didn’t find out till recently that all that he kept saying when he was taken to the hospital was how he couldn’t miss my last musical. I went to the hospital that night and I saw him crying, I have never seen him cry before so my thoughts about a man who was never afraid or upset about anything were totally proved wrong by the reality of the situation that he was put in.
Additionally, you will write 2-3 paragraphs explaining how you will expand your paper at this point into a finished product: Which paragraphs need more work? Do you need more outside sources to support your argument? Do your paragraphs need stronger transition sentences? Choose a partner or group of partners and ask them to read and respond to what you have so far.
My first 5 pages were only on the topic of vision. So now I want to start and work on my other forms of senses and how they will explain better who I really am. My two other senses are hearing and taste. I can elaborate on the 3 years I had put in at our local Dairy Queen and how those experiences intertwine with taste and how it will better explain me. I will also go on to hearing part of the paper describing my love for Spanish as a language and also Hispanic music and how it will be used as a vehicle to answer the question what is “I”.
I think that some of my earlier paragraphs need more work than the rest of the others. I think that some of my paragraphs need better transition statements just to get the paragraphs flowing better.
