Over my life I’ve had many adversities and challenges to overcome but I’ve always preserved and navigated though each one. These challenges have come in the form of learning Japanese from kindergarten to now, playing basketball and keeping up with my grade, and life or death situations with my brother. All these moments have shaped my character and the man I am becoming today. Therefore, I feel like I should add these things into my essay and make up the real Kalen, First, I want to talk about my time at FLICS and learning Japanese at an early age. FLICS stands for Foreign Language Immersion Cultural Studies and is the elementary and middle school I attended where we not only learned basic Arithmetic, English, Social Studies, and Science, but we also learned one of the four main foreign languages. The language I learned was Japanese which I started to learn in kindergarten and continued to learn in high school. I consistently exceled in my studies of Japanese eventually taking my world language test and gaining all my credits for high school world language. However, I still wanted to continue my studies in Japanese therefore, I took Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Yet, this wasn’t enough of a challenge for me, so I decided to take IB Japanese 3. During my year of taking IB Japanese I enjoyed it and maintained an A all year. I decided not to take IB Japanese my senior year because of my lack of preparation for the IB test due to me not taking Japanese freshman year and only taking Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Second, I want to talk about the challenges I’ve overcome playing basketball and managing that with school. I’ve played organized basketball since I was 8 and although I’ve gone through a lot of hardships I love it. I remember all those close games, game winners, and games where we were the underdogs and still won. For example, my sophomore year summer my AAU team went to California where we were outsiders and played many jealous opponents. There were lies thrown on our names like being older than we really were, cheating, and recruiting other players who weren’t really on our team. However, we persevered and won the whole tournament, our performance even encouraged the tournament director to offer us a Puma endorsement. We came in and played with the most heart out of everybody and although we were underdogs we came out on top. Lastly, I want to talk about the life-or-death situations me and my brother, Khari, had to overcome. Our parents have always instilled awareness of our surroundings into me and my brother, and we’ve used those skills to save our lives. A couple months ago me and my family were riding in the car on the freeway when somebody pulled up beside us and pointed a gun inside our car. We now know this was a case of mistaken identity, but one wrong move could’ve ended all of our lives. I was the first to notice the gun and alerted my dad who then sped off, while me and my brother watched the car from the back to make sure we weren’t being followed. However, we noticed we were still being followed so we calmly alerted our dad, and although we were terrified, we managed to make it through and persevere.

Over my life I’ve had many adversities and challenges to overcome but I’ve always preserved and navigated though each one. These challenges have come in the form of learning Japanese from kindergarten to now, playing basketball and keeping up with my grade, and life or death situations with my brother. All these moments have shaped my character and the man I am becoming today. Therefore, I feel like I should add these things into my essay and make up the real Kalen, First, I want to talk about my time at FLICS and learning Japanese at an early age. FLICS stands for Foreign Language Immersion Cultural Studies and is the elementary and middle school I attended where we not only learned basic Arithmetic, English, Social Studies, and Science, but we also learned one of the four main foreign languages. The language I learned was Japanese which I started to learn in kindergarten and continued to learn in high school. I consistently exceled in my studies of Japanese eventually taking my world language test and gaining all my credits for high school world language. However, I still wanted to continue my studies in Japanese therefore, I took Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Yet, this wasn’t enough of a challenge for me, so I decided to take IB Japanese 3. During my year of taking IB Japanese I enjoyed it and maintained an A all year. I decided not to take IB Japanese my senior year because of my lack of preparation for the IB test due to me not taking Japanese freshman year and only taking Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Second, I want to talk about the challenges I’ve overcome playing basketball and managing that with school. I’ve played organized basketball since I was 8 and although I’ve gone through a lot of hardships I love it. I remember all those close games, game winners, and games where we were the underdogs and still won. For example, my sophomore year summer my AAU team went to California where we were outsiders and played many jealous opponents. There were lies thrown on our names like being older than we really were, cheating, and recruiting other players who weren’t really on our team. However, we persevered and won the whole tournament, our performance even encouraged the tournament director to offer us a Puma endorsement. We came in and played with the most heart out of everybody and although we were underdogs we came out on top. Lastly, I want to talk about the life-or-death situations me and my brother, Khari, had to overcome. Our parents have always instilled awareness of our surroundings into me and my brother, and we’ve used those skills to save our lives. A couple months ago me and my family were riding in the car on the freeway when somebody pulled up beside us and pointed a gun inside our car. We now know this was a case of mistaken identity, but one wrong move could’ve ended all of our lives. I was the first to notice the gun and alerted my dad who then sped off, while me and my brother watched the car from the back to make sure we weren’t being followed. However, we noticed we were still being followed so we calmly alerted our dad, and although we were terrified, we managed to make it through and persevere.

Over my life I’ve had many adversities and challenges to overcome but I’ve always preserved and navigated though each one. These challenges have come in the form of learning Japanese from kindergarten to now, playing basketball and keeping up with my grade, and life or death situations with my brother. All these moments have shaped my character and the man I am becoming today. Therefore, I feel like I should add these things into my essay and make up the real Kalen, First, I want to talk about my time at FLICS and learning Japanese at an early age. FLICS stands for Foreign Language Immersion Cultural Studies and is the elementary and middle school I attended where we not only learned basic Arithmetic, English, Social Studies, and Science, but we also learned one of the four main foreign languages. The language I learned was Japanese which I started to learn in kindergarten and continued to learn in high school. I consistently exceled in my studies of Japanese eventually taking my world language test and gaining all my credits for high school world language. However, I still wanted to continue my studies in Japanese therefore, I took Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Yet, this wasn’t enough of a challenge for me, so I decided to take IB Japanese 3. During my year of taking IB Japanese I enjoyed it and maintained an A all year. I decided not to take IB Japanese my senior year because of my lack of preparation for the IB test due to me not taking Japanese freshman year and only taking Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Second, I want to talk about the challenges I’ve overcome playing basketball and managing that with school. I’ve played organized basketball since I was 8 and although I’ve gone through a lot of hardships I love it. I remember all those close games, game winners, and games where we were the underdogs and still won. For example, my sophomore year summer my AAU team went to California where we were outsiders and played many jealous opponents. There were lies thrown on our names like being older than we really were, cheating, and recruiting other players who weren’t really on our team. However, we persevered and won the whole tournament, our performance even encouraged the tournament director to offer us a Puma endorsement. We came in and played with the most heart out of everybody and although we were underdogs we came out on top. Lastly, I want to talk about the life-or-death situations me and my brother, Khari, had to overcome. Our parents have always instilled awareness of our surroundings into me and my brother, and we’ve used those skills to save our lives. A couple months ago me and my family were riding in the car on the freeway when somebody pulled up beside us and pointed a gun inside our car. We now know this was a case of mistaken identity, but one wrong move could’ve ended all of our lives. I was the first to notice the gun and alerted my dad who then sped off, while me and my brother watched the car from the back to make sure we weren’t being followed. However, we noticed we were still being followed so we calmly alerted our dad, and although we were terrified, we managed to make it through and persevere.

Over my life I’ve had many adversities and challenges to overcome but I’ve always preserved and navigated though each one. These challenges have come in the form of learning Japanese from kindergarten to now, playing basketball and keeping up with my grade, and life or death situations with my brother. All these moments have shaped my character and the man I am becoming today. Therefore, I feel like I should add these things into my essay and make up the real Kalen, First, I want to talk about my time at FLICS and learning Japanese at an early age. FLICS stands for Foreign Language Immersion Cultural Studies and is the elementary and middle school I attended where we not only learned basic Arithmetic, English, Social Studies, and Science, but we also learned one of the four main foreign languages. The language I learned was Japanese which I started to learn in kindergarten and continued to learn in high school. I consistently exceled in my studies of Japanese eventually taking my world language test and gaining all my credits for high school world language. However, I still wanted to continue my studies in Japanese therefore, I took Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Yet, this wasn’t enough of a challenge for me, so I decided to take IB Japanese 3. During my year of taking IB Japanese I enjoyed it and maintained an A all year. I decided not to take IB Japanese my senior year because of my lack of preparation for the IB test due to me not taking Japanese freshman year and only taking Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Second, I want to talk about the challenges I’ve overcome playing basketball and managing that with school. I’ve played organized basketball since I was 8 and although I’ve gone through a lot of hardships I love it. I remember all those close games, game winners, and games where we were the underdogs and still won. For example, my sophomore year summer my AAU team went to California where we were outsiders and played many jealous opponents. There were lies thrown on our names like being older than we really were, cheating, and recruiting other players who weren’t really on our team. However, we persevered and won the whole tournament, our performance even encouraged the tournament director to offer us a Puma endorsement. We came in and played with the most heart out of everybody and although we were underdogs we came out on top. Lastly, I want to talk about the life-or-death situations me and my brother, Khari, had to overcome. Our parents have always instilled awareness of our surroundings into me and my brother, and we’ve used those skills to save our lives. A couple months ago me and my family were riding in the car on the freeway when somebody pulled up beside us and pointed a gun inside our car. We now know this was a case of mistaken identity, but one wrong move could’ve ended all of our lives. I was the first to notice the gun and alerted my dad who then sped off, while me and my brother watched the car from the back to make sure we weren’t being followed. However, we noticed we were still being followed so we calmly alerted our dad, and although we were terrified, we managed to make it through and persevere.

Over my life I’ve had many adversities and challenges to overcome but I’ve always preserved and navigated though each one. These challenges have come in the form of learning Japanese from kindergarten to now, playing basketball and keeping up with my grade, and life or death situations with my brother. All these moments have shaped my character and the man I am becoming today. Therefore, I feel like I should add these things into my essay and make up the real Kalen, First, I want to talk about my time at FLICS and learning Japanese at an early age. FLICS stands for Foreign Language Immersion Cultural Studies and is the elementary and middle school I attended where we not only learned basic Arithmetic, English, Social Studies, and Science, but we also learned one of the four main foreign languages. The language I learned was Japanese which I started to learn in kindergarten and continued to learn in high school. I consistently exceled in my studies of Japanese eventually taking my world language test and gaining all my credits for high school world language. However, I still wanted to continue my studies in Japanese therefore, I took Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Yet, this wasn’t enough of a challenge for me, so I decided to take IB Japanese 3. During my year of taking IB Japanese I enjoyed it and maintained an A all year. I decided not to take IB Japanese my senior year because of my lack of preparation for the IB test due to me not taking Japanese freshman year and only taking Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Second, I want to talk about the challenges I’ve overcome playing basketball and managing that with school. I’ve played organized basketball since I was 8 and although I’ve gone through a lot of hardships I love it. I remember all those close games, game winners, and games where we were the underdogs and still won. For example, my sophomore year summer my AAU team went to California where we were outsiders and played many jealous opponents. There were lies thrown on our names like being older than we really were, cheating, and recruiting other players who weren’t really on our team. However, we persevered and won the whole tournament, our performance even encouraged the tournament director to offer us a Puma endorsement. We came in and played with the most heart out of everybody and although we were underdogs we came out on top. Lastly, I want to talk about the life-or-death situations me and my brother, Khari, had to overcome. Our parents have always instilled awareness of our surroundings into me and my brother, and we’ve used those skills to save our lives. A couple months ago me and my family were riding in the car on the freeway when somebody pulled up beside us and pointed a gun inside our car. We now know this was a case of mistaken identity, but one wrong move could’ve ended all of our lives. I was the first to notice the gun and alerted my dad who then sped off, while me and my brother watched the car from the back to make sure we weren’t being followed. However, we noticed we were still being followed so we calmly alerted our dad, and although we were terrified, we managed to make it through and persevere.

Over my life I’ve had many adversities and challenges to overcome but I’ve always preserved and navigated though each one. These challenges have come in the form of learning Japanese from kindergarten to now, playing basketball and keeping up with my grade, and life or death situations with my brother. All these moments have shaped my character and the man I am becoming today. Therefore, I feel like I should add these things into my essay and make up the real Kalen, First, I want to talk about my time at FLICS and learning Japanese at an early age. FLICS stands for Foreign Language Immersion Cultural Studies and is the elementary and middle school I attended where we not only learned basic Arithmetic, English, Social Studies, and Science, but we also learned one of the four main foreign languages. The language I learned was Japanese which I started to learn in kindergarten and continued to learn in high school. I consistently exceled in my studies of Japanese eventually taking my world language test and gaining all my credits for high school world language. However, I still wanted to continue my studies in Japanese therefore, I took Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Yet, this wasn’t enough of a challenge for me, so I decided to take IB Japanese 3. During my year of taking IB Japanese I enjoyed it and maintained an A all year. I decided not to take IB Japanese my senior year because of my lack of preparation for the IB test due to me not taking Japanese freshman year and only taking Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Second, I want to talk about the challenges I’ve overcome playing basketball and managing that with school. I’ve played organized basketball since I was 8 and although I’ve gone through a lot of hardships I love it. I remember all those close games, game winners, and games where we were the underdogs and still won. For example, my sophomore year summer my AAU team went to California where we were outsiders and played many jealous opponents. There were lies thrown on our names like being older than we really were, cheating, and recruiting other players who weren’t really on our team. However, we persevered and won the whole tournament, our performance even encouraged the tournament director to offer us a Puma endorsement. We came in and played with the most heart out of everybody and although we were underdogs we came out on top. Lastly, I want to talk about the life-or-death situations me and my brother, Khari, had to overcome. Our parents have always instilled awareness of our surroundings into me and my brother, and we’ve used those skills to save our lives. A couple months ago me and my family were riding in the car on the freeway when somebody pulled up beside us and pointed a gun inside our car. We now know this was a case of mistaken identity, but one wrong move could’ve ended all of our lives. I was the first to notice the gun and alerted my dad who then sped off, while me and my brother watched the car from the back to make sure we weren’t being followed. We always managed to make it through and persevere.

Over my life I’ve had many adversities and challenges to overcome but I’ve always preserved and navigated though each one. These challenges have come in the form of learning Japanese from kindergarten to now, playing basketball and keeping up with my grade, and life or death situations with my brother. All these moments have shaped my character and the man I am becoming today. Therefore, I feel like I should add these things into my essay and make up the real Kalen, First, I want to talk about my time at FLICS and learning Japanese at an early age. FLICS stands for Foreign Language Immersion Cultural Studies and is the elementary and middle school I attended where we not only learned basic Arithmetic, English, Social Studies, and Science, but we also learned one of the four main foreign languages. The language I learned was Japanese which I started to learn in kindergarten and continued to learn in high school. I consistently exceled in my studies of Japanese eventually taking my world language test and gaining all my credits for high school world language. However, I still wanted to continue my studies in Japanese therefore, I took Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Yet, this wasn’t enough of a challenge for me, so I decided to take IB Japanese 3. During my year of taking IB Japanese I enjoyed it and maintained an A all year. I decided not to take IB Japanese my senior year because of my lack of preparation for the IB test due to me not taking Japanese freshman year and only taking Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Second, I want to talk about the challenges I’ve overcome playing basketball and managing that with school. I’ve played organized basketball since I was 8 and although I’ve gone through a lot of hardships I love it. I remember all those close games, game winners, and games where we were the underdogs and still won. For example, my sophomore year summer my AAU team went to California where we were outsiders and played many jealous opponents. There were lies thrown on our names like being older than we really were, cheating, and recruiting other players who weren’t really on our team. However, we persevered and won the whole tournament, our performance even encouraged the tournament director to offer us a Puma endorsement. We came in and played with the most heart out of everybody and although we were underdogs we came out on top.

Over my life I’ve had many adversities and challenges to overcome but I’ve always preserved and navigated though each one. These challenges have come in the form of learning Japanese from kindergarten to now, playing basketball and keeping up with my grade, and life or death situations with my brother. All these moments have shaped my character and the man I am becoming today. Therefore, I feel like I should add these things into my essay and make up the real Kalen, First, I want to talk about my time at FLICS and learning Japanese at an early age. FLICS stands for Foreign Language Immersion Cultural Studies and is the elementary and middle school I attended where we not only learned basic Arithmetic, English, Social Studies, and Science, but we also learned one of the four main foreign languages. The language I learned was Japanese which I started to learn in kindergarten and continued to learn in high school. I consistently exceled in my studies of Japanese eventually taking my world language test and gaining all my credits for high school world language. However, I still wanted to continue my studies in Japanese therefore, I took Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Yet, this wasn’t enough of a challenge for me, so I decided to take IB Japanese 3. During my year of taking IB Japanese I enjoyed it and maintained an A all year. I decided not to take IB Japanese my senior year because of my lack of preparation for the IB test due to me not taking Japanese freshman year and only taking Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Second, I want to talk about the challenges I’ve overcome playing basketball and managing that with school. I’ve played organized basketball since I was 8 and although I’ve gone through a lot of hardships I love it. I remember all those close games, game winners, and games where we were the underdogs and still won. For example, my sophomore year summer my AAU team went to California where we were outsiders and played many jealous opponents. There were lies thrown on our names like being older than we really were, cheating, and recruiting other players who weren’t really on our team. However, we persevered and won the whole tournament, our performance even encouraged the tournament director to offer us a Puma endorsement. We came in and played with the most heart out of everybody and although we were underdogs we came out on top. Lastly, I want to talk about the life-or-death situations me and my brother, Khari, had to overcome. Our parents have always instilled awareness of our surroundings into me and my brother, and we’ve used those skills to save our lives. A couple months ago me and my family were riding in the car on the freeway when somebody pulled up beside us and pointed a gun inside our car. We now know this was a case of mistaken identity, but one wrong move could’ve ended all of our lives. I was the first to notice the gun and alerted my dad who then sped off, while me and my brother watched the car from the back to make sure we weren’t being followed. However, we noticed we were still being followed so we calmly alerted our dad, and although we were terrified, we managed to make it through and persevere

Over my life I’ve had many adversities and challenges to overcome but I’ve always preserved and navigated though each one. These challenges have come in the form of learning Japanese from kindergarten to now, playing basketball and keeping up with my grade, and life or death situations with my brother. All these moments have shaped my character and the man I am becoming today. Therefore, I feel like I should add these things into my essay and make up the real Kalen, First, I want to talk about my time at FLICS and learning Japanese at an early age. FLICS stands for Foreign Language Immersion Cultural Studies and is the elementary and middle school I attended where we not only learned basic Arithmetic, English, Social Studies, and Science, but we also learned one of the four main foreign languages. The language I learned was Japanese which I started to learn in kindergarten and continued to learn in high school. I consistently exceled in my studies of Japanese eventually taking my world language test and gaining all my credits for high school world language. However, I still wanted to continue my studies in Japanese therefore, I took Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Yet, this wasn’t enough of a challenge for me, so I decided to take IB Japanese 3. During my year of taking IB Japanese I enjoyed it and maintained an A all year. I decided not to take IB Japanese my senior year because of my lack of preparation for the IB test due to me not taking Japanese freshman year and only taking Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Second, I want to talk about the challenges I’ve overcome playing basketball and managing that with school. I’ve played organized basketball since I was 8 and although I’ve gone through a lot of hardships I love it. I remember all those close games, game winners, and games where we were the underdogs and still won. For example, my sophomore year summer my AAU team went to California where we were outsiders and played many jealous opponents. There were lies thrown on our names like being older than we really were, cheating, and recruiting other players who weren’t really on our team. However, we persevered and won the whole tournament, our performance even encouraged the tournament director to offer us a Puma endorsement. We came in and played with the most heart out of everybody and although we were underdogs we came out on top. Lastly, I want to talk about the life-or-death situations me and my brother, Khari, had to overcome. Our parents have always instilled awareness of our surroundings into me and my brother, and we’ve used those skills to save our lives. A couple months ago me and my family were riding in the car on the freeway when somebody pulled up beside us and pointed a gun inside our car. We now know this was a case of mistaken identity, but one wrong move could’ve ended all of our lives. I was the first to notice the gun and alerted my dad who then sped off, while me and my brother watched the car from the back to make sure we weren’t being followed. However, we noticed we were still being followed so we calmly alerted our dad, and although we were terrified, we managed to make it through and persevere.

Over my life I’ve had many adversities and challenges to overcome but I’ve always preserved and navigated though each one. These challenges have come in the form of learning Japanese from kindergarten to now, playing basketball and keeping up with my grade, and life or death situations with my brother. All these moments have shaped my character and the man I am becoming today. Therefore, I feel like I should add these things into my essay and make up the real Kalen, First, I want to talk about my time at FLICS and learning Japanese at an early age. FLICS stands for Foreign Language Immersion Cultural Studies and is the elementary and middle school I attended where we not only learned basic Arithmetic, English, Social Studies, and Science, but we also learned one of the four main foreign languages. The language I learned was Japanese which I started to learn in kindergarten and continued to learn in high school. I consistently exceled in my studies of Japanese eventually taking my world language test and gaining all my credits for high school world language. However, I still wanted to continue my studies in Japanese therefore, I took Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Yet, this wasn’t enough of a challenge for me, so I decided to take IB Japanese 3. During my year of taking IB Japanese I enjoyed it and maintained an A all year. I decided not to take IB Japanese my senior year because of my lack of preparation for the IB test due to me not taking Japanese freshman year and only taking Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Second, I want to talk about the challenges I’ve overcome playing basketball and managing that with school. I’ve played organized basketball since I was 8 and although I’ve gone through a lot of hardships I love it. I remember all those close games, game winners, and games where we were the underdogs and still won. For example, my sophomore year summer my AAU team went to California where we were outsiders and played many jealous opponents. There were lies thrown on our names like being older than we really were, cheating, and recruiting other players who weren’t really on our team. However, we persevered and won the whole tournament, our performance even encouraged the tournament director to offer us a Puma endorsement. We came in and played with the most heart out of everybody and although we were underdogs we came out on top. Lastly, I want to talk about the life-or-death situations me and my brother, Khari, had to overcome. Our parents have always instilled awareness of our surroundings into me and my brother, and we’ve used those skills to save our lives. A couple months ago me and my family were riding in the car on the freeway when somebody pulled up beside us and pointed a gun inside our car. We now know this was a case of mistaken identity, but one wrong move could’ve ended all of our lives. I was the first to notice the gun and alerted my dad who then sped off, while me and my brother watched the car from the back to make sure we weren’t being followed. However, we noticed we were still being followed so we calmly alerted our dad, and although we were terrified, we managed to make it through and persevere.

Over my life I’ve had many adversities and challenges to overcome but I’ve always preserved and navigated though each one. These challenges have come in the form of learning Japanese from kindergarten to now, playing basketball and keeping up with my grade, and life or death situations with my brother. All these moments have shaped my character and the man I am becoming today. Therefore, I feel like I should add these things into my essay and make up the real Kalen, First, I want to talk about my time at FLICS and learning Japanese at an early age. FLICS stands for Foreign Language Immersion Cultural Studies and is the elementary and middle school I attended where we not only learned basic Arithmetic, English, Social Studies, and Science, but we also learned one of the four main foreign languages. The language I learned was Japanese which I started to learn in kindergarten and continued to learn in high school. I consistently exceled in my studies of Japanese eventually taking my world language test and gaining all my credits for high school world language. However, I still wanted to continue my studies in Japanese therefore, I took Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Yet, this wasn’t enough of a challenge for me, so I decided to take IB Japanese 3. During my year of taking IB Japanese I enjoyed it and maintained an A all year. I decided not to take IB Japanese my senior year because of my lack of preparation for the IB test due to me not taking Japanese freshman year and only taking Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Second, I want to talk about the challenges I’ve overcome playing basketball and managing that with school. I’ve played organized basketball since I was 8 and although I’ve gone through a lot of hardships I love it. I remember all those close games, game winners, and games where we were the underdogs and still won. For example, my sophomore year summer my AAU team went to California where we were outsiders and played many jealous opponents. There were lies thrown on our names like being older than we really were, cheating, and recruiting other players who weren’t really on our team. However, we persevered and won the whole tournament, our performance even encouraged the tournament director to offer us a Puma endorsement. We came in and played with the most heart out of everybody and although we were underdogs we came out on top. Lastly, I want to talk about the life-or-death situations me and my brother, Khari, had to overcome. Our parents have always instilled awareness of our surroundings into me and my brother, and we’ve used those skills to save our lives. A couple months ago me and my family were riding in the car on the freeway when somebody pulled up beside us and pointed a gun inside our car. We now know this was a case of mistaken identity, but one wrong move could’ve ended all of our lives. I was the first to notice the gun and alerted my dad who then sped off, while me and my brother watched the car from the back to make sure we weren’t being followed. However, we noticed we were still being followed so we calmly alerted our dad, and although we were terrified, we managed to make it through and persevere.

Over my life I’ve had many adversities and challenges to overcome but I’ve always preserved and navigated though each one. These challenges have come in the form of learning Japanese from kindergarten to now, playing basketball and keeping up with my grade, and life or death situations with my brother. All these moments have shaped my character and the man I am becoming today. Therefore, I feel like I should add these things into my essay and make up the real Kalen, First, I want to talk about my time at FLICS and learning Japanese at an early age. FLICS stands for Foreign Language Immersion Cultural Studies and is the elementary and middle school I attended where we not only learned basic Arithmetic, English, Social Studies, and Science, but we also learned one of the four main foreign languages. The language I learned was Japanese which I started to learn in kindergarten and continued to learn in high school. I consistently exceled in my studies of Japanese eventually taking my world language test and gaining all my credits for high school world language. However, I still wanted to continue my studies in Japanese therefore, I took Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Yet, this wasn’t enough of a challenge for me, so I decided to take IB Japanese 3. During my year of taking IB Japanese I enjoyed it and maintained an A all year. I decided not to take IB Japanese my senior year because of my lack of preparation for the IB test due to me not taking Japanese freshman year and only taking Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Second, I want to talk about the challenges I’ve overcome playing basketball and managing that with school. I’ve played organized basketball since I was 8 and although I’ve gone through a lot of hardships I love it. I remember all those close games, game winners, and games where we were the underdogs and still won. For example, my sophomore year summer my AAU team went to California where we were outsiders and played many jealous opponents. There were lies thrown on our names like being older than we really were, cheating, and recruiting other players who weren’t really on our team. However, we persevered and won the whole tournament, our performance even encouraged the tournament director to offer us a Puma endorsement. We came in and played with the most heart out of everybody and although we were underdogs we came out on top. Lastly, I want to talk about the life-or-death situations me and my brother, Khari, had to overcome. Our parents have always instilled awareness of our surroundings into me and my brother, and we’ve used those skills to save our lives. A couple months ago me and my family were riding in the car on the freeway when somebody pulled up beside us and pointed a gun inside our car. We now know this was a case of mistaken identity, but one wrong move could’ve ended all of our lives. I was the first to notice the gun and alerted my dad who then sped off, while me and my brother watched the car from the back to make sure we weren’t being followed. However, we noticed we were still being followed so we calmly alerted our dad, and although we were terrified, we managed to make it through and persevere.

Over my life I’ve had many adversities and challenges to overcome but I’ve always preserved and navigated though each one. These challenges have come in the form of learning Japanese from kindergarten to now, playing basketball and keeping up with my grade, and life or death situations with my brother. All these moments have shaped my character and the man I am becoming today. Therefore, I feel like I should add these things into my essay and make up the real Kalen, First, I want to talk about my time at FLICS and learning Japanese at an early age. FLICS stands for Foreign Language Immersion Cultural Studies and is the elementary and middle school I attended where we not only learned basic Arithmetic, English, Social Studies, and Science, but we also learned one of the four main foreign languages. The language I learned was Japanese which I started to learn in kindergarten and continued to learn in high school. I consistently exceled in my studies of Japanese eventually taking my world language test and gaining all my credits for high school world language. However, I still wanted to continue my studies in Japanese therefore, I took Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Yet, this wasn’t enough of a challenge for me, so I decided to take IB Japanese 3. During my year of taking IB Japanese I enjoyed it and maintained an A all year. I decided not to take IB Japanese my senior year because of my lack of preparation for the IB test due to me not taking Japanese freshman year and only taking Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Second, I want to talk about the challenges I’ve overcome playing basketball and managing that with school. I’ve played organized basketball since I was 8 and although I’ve gone through a lot of hardships I love it. I remember all those close games, game winners, and games where we were the underdogs and still won. For example, my sophomore year summer my AAU team went to California where we were outsiders and played many jealous opponents. There were lies thrown on our names like being older than we really were, cheating, and recruiting other players who weren’t really on our team. However, we persevered and won the whole tournament, our performance even encouraged the tournament director to offer us a Puma endorsement. We came in and played with the most heart out of everybody and although we were underdogs we came out on top. Lastly, I want to talk about the life-or-death situations me and my brother, Khari, had to overcome. Our parents have always instilled awareness of our surroundings into me and my brother, and we’ve used those skills to save our lives. A couple months ago me and my family were riding in the car on the freeway when somebody pulled up beside us and pointed a gun inside our car. We now know this was a case of mistaken identity, but one wrong move could’ve ended all of our lives. I was the first to notice the gun and alerted my dad who then sped off, while me and my brother watched the car from the back to make sure we weren’t being followed. However, we noticed we were still being followed so we calmly alerted our dad, and although we were terrified, we managed to make it through and persevere.

Over my life I’ve had many adversities and challenges to overcome but I’ve always preserved and navigated though each one. These challenges have come in the form of learning Japanese from kindergarten to now, playing basketball and keeping up with my grade, and life or death situations with my brother. All these moments have shaped my character and the man I am becoming today. Therefore, I feel like I should add these things into my essay and make up the real Kalen, First, I want to talk about my time at FLICS and learning Japanese at an early age. FLICS stands for Foreign Language Immersion Cultural Studies and is the elementary and middle school I attended where we not only learned basic Arithmetic, English, Social Studies, and Science, but we also learned one of the four main foreign languages. The language I learned was Japanese which I started to learn in kindergarten and continued to learn in high school. I consistently exceled in my studies of Japanese eventually taking my world language test and gaining all my credits for high school world language. However, I still wanted to continue my studies in Japanese therefore, I took Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Yet, this wasn’t enough of a challenge for me, so I decided to take IB Japanese 3. During my year of taking IB Japanese I enjoyed it and maintained an A all year. I decided not to take IB Japanese my senior year because of my lack of preparation for the IB test due to me not taking Japanese freshman year and only taking Japanese 1 my sophomore year. Second, I want to talk about the challenges I’ve overcome playing basketball and managing that with school. I’ve played organized basketball since I was 8 and although I’ve gone through a lot of hardships I love it. I remember all those close games, game winners, and games where we were the underdogs and still won. For example, my sophomore year summer my AAU team went to California where we were outsiders and played many jealous opponents. There were lies thrown on our names like being older than we really were, cheating, and recruiting other players who weren’t really on our team. However, we persevered and won the whole tournament, our performance even encouraged the tournament director to offer us a Puma endorsement. We came in and played with the most heart out of everybody and although we were underdogs we came out on top. Lastly, I want to talk about the life-or-death situations me and my brother, Khari, had to overcome. Our parents have always instilled awareness of our surroundings into me and my brother, and we’ve used those skills to save our lives. A couple months ago me and my family were riding in the car on the freeway when somebody pulled up beside us and pointed a gun inside our car. We now know this was a case of mistaken identity, but one wrong move could’ve ended all of our lives. I was the first to notice the gun and alerted my dad who then sped off, while me and my brother watched the car from the back to make sure we weren’t being followed. However, we noticed we were still being followed so we calmly alerted our dad, and although we were terrified, we managed to make it through and persevere.