Currently, the population around the world is at around 7 billion with a child being born every 8 seconds. The United States hold about 317 million. By the time you finish reading this paragraph halfway a baby will be born. That baby could be born to any type of family. Single mother, singly father, abandon parents, citizens of this country, illegal immigrants, refugees…anything.

For me it’s crazy to think that I am the daughter of a mother and father who came to this country to make not only a better life for themselves but for the family they hoped to someday have.

My parents came to America from Mexico. They established a life in California and shortly after decided to pop out a child — me. We lived in a modest blue house in the middle of Los Angeles with a handful of relatives. I had the best some of the best times of my childhood. Flash forward a few years to when I was five. My parents and I picked up and moved to Tennessee….of all places. I kid you not the only things we owned in the one bedroom apartment was a mattress, clothes, a table, and a television. My parents did not speak barely any English, but they had a job and with the little English they knew they also enrolled me into the local school just a couple of minutes away. We didn’t have a car, so we walked. My mother become pregnant with my sister, and I can remember a time when we would squeeze my moms pregnant self through the wooden fence that separated our apartment complex with the gas station behind us. There was always food on the table and clothes on our backs. We. were. poor….but happy.

It really blows my mind how poor my family was, yet I had such a great childhood. What blows my mind even more is the fact that many kids like me were in that same situation. What blows my mind even more that THAT is that my parents did not let anything get in the way of achieving the ‘American Dream’ so few ever achieve in life when you start from nothing. The thing that I gained from my parents more than anything is that nothing can stop you from reaching your dreams. Those dreams do not have to be as big as being President one day, it can simply be acing your next test or landing a little league coaching job.

I am now 21 years old and entering my second to last semester of college at Middle Tennessee State University. I have accomplished more things in my life than I could have ever imagined. I get speechless at the thought of where I have came from to where I am now. As a first generation student this life I am living is the dream. As I walk across the stage in 2014 I will not have only done it for me and my parents, but for the thousands of people like me that think they can’t yet have dreams to go far. I’m not the product of parents who gave me everything I wanted, nor am I the product of a person who did not work hard in life and got everything out of luck. There are 3 H’s that come to mind: hard work, humility, and honesty.

Hardwork: C’mon, easy come easy go, am I right? When you work hard you feel better about how much you have accomplished. A little blood, sweat, and tears never killed no body. Hard work pays off in the end.

Humility: No one likes to hear anyone brag about their successes in life, let someone else do that for you. If there is someone in life who has helped you reach a goal or impacted you in a way then let them know. This is a short six minute video that will put things more clearly as it did for me.

Honesty: Always, always, always be true to yourself and be true to others. Lying will not get you as far as you think it will. A person will respect you more if you are truthful with them, and you will gain followers that way.

I approach everything in my life with hard work, humility, and honesty. They’re things I learned from my parents, and they’re things I will never forget. Any can achieve the dreams that they have in mind. Don’t think, just do.