The American Dream (Adriana Morales)

What does the American dream mean to the millions of immigrants in the U.S? Does it mean freedom? Does it mean hope? Does it mean self destruction? In my point of view the American dream represents struggles, dreams and opportunities for a better future. I believe that to succeed in today’s society you have to overcome many obstacles and work as hard as possible to make the best out of yourself. The American dream stands up to its standards, because of the amount of effort and hard work that's been put into by the people. Unfortunately, hard work could make a human being lose sight of family, dreams, and ourselves for the lack of time in their busy schedules and the overwhelming stress.
As daughter of two immigrant parents. From my point of view coming to the United States was fairly easy as a child. Going to school wasn’t hard, what was hard was communicating with my fellow peers and teachers. As time went by I was adapting to this culture. It was easy for me because I was four when I came here. As for my parents my dad worked a full time job and my mom did too. Every morning we got up and I got dropped out at my babysitter’s house. That didn’t last along time, what I can say I wasn’t a calmed child. I had about 3 babysitters. Till one day my parents realized that they were focusing too much on their jobs and not spending too much time on me and on top of that they spend money paying the babysitter. So my parents decided that my mom was going to stop working and take care of me and the house. That made a big difference in many ways. I found it difficult going to High School, because your counselors encourage you to sign up for many universities or colleges. In my case I couldn’t because you needed to have a social security number. Something I wasn’t going to get anytime soon.
By the mid 90's the immigration situation wasn’t as difficult as now days. Everything started since the 9/11 attack, everything and everywhere was being highly secured. The borders were protected day and night; the situation was getting complicated each day. As the tremendous atrocity caused for many immigrants to lose their jobs and also to be racially profiled in today’s society. As we know we haven't fully abolished racism and for that matter immigrants still encounter a stereotype that gets in the life’s of many immigrants. The impact that immigration issues have made in my life is enormous, for the reason that I have my families background; as a young Latina I feel that my life is difficult than others. It's challenging to obtain a higher social status and also a job, because my family and I are considered the minority.
Working as a San Francisco Digital Connector was a very life changing period of my life. The reason why I chose to have experience in the program is because I love to have knowledge about technology. Never did I knew that it was so exciting having people from the community come to our lab and learn about everything about internet safety. I had so many nice experiences having several students that I thought. When my first student walked in the computer lab, I was nervous I had so many things in my mind. I thought I wasn’t going to help her sufficient with what she wanted to learn. I was proven wrong when at the end she left with a smile on her face. She mentioned that she was going go home and practice all the steps we went through. I had the opportunity to install computers in three labs, East Oakland, Malcolm X Elementary School and Valencia Gardens. I noticed that if one single person has knowledge of technology, they could teach many other people. That was my case, every Friday we had two class sessions and the students from the community were very capable to understand the basic usage of a computer. Now that the program finished I feel that I have made a big change in many people. Some people think that teaching technology is not an important thing, but they are wrong. Teaching people about technology is very useful in many ways. As far as our life style is going in advance machines are replacing people. Therefore, people with insufficient knowledge should have a basic learning about computers.
The first step I would take onto changing my life and the life of many immigrants would be by first going to college and attaining a career on business or technology which would help others to get inspired onto believing on their dreams. As I mention earlier I believe that perseverance and hard work is the key towards success. The American dream would just be a saying If it wasn't for the hopes and dreams that the immigrants put on a daily basis. Knowledge is power they say, therefore I will be attending to college to make a difference in the society that labels and sets immigrants into generalizations. If I get this scholarship my dream will come true. Once we break the barrier that sets us apart from others that’s when we will be able to succeed better. Not many Latinos/Hispanics get to go to college from the lack of financial needs, the environment they live in and certain lifestyles that interrupt a higher learning.
To top off all the struggles and dreams that I have sincerely expressed I would like to say, I have many goals in life that I am soon to accomplish I now know what it takes to be able to accomplish in a way that will help me overcome obstacles in the future and that will also help motivate my race, generation and myself as an aspiring immigrant to live the American dream.