Hello, my name is Marvensky Laguerre. I'm currently a senior in high school. I'm very passionate when it comes to health and fitness so I plan on going to college after high school to study health, fitness, nutrition, and physical education. I aim to become a health/fitness instructor or physical education teacher because I want to help people stay strong and healthy while doing something I'm passionate about. I faced many challenges while going to school as a non-U.S. citizen. These challenges vary from understanding the language to fitting in and battling a feeling of inferiority when I compare myself to other students. Of course, I didn't speak any English and expected things to be very challenging because the United States looks and is very different compared to where I'm from. My family and I moved from Haiti to the United States for a better life and we didn't expect any of the challenges we'd face as a result. Going to school was very hard for me because I didn't speak any English and didn't understand anything that was taught in the classroom. I didn't like the feeling of not understanding anything when spoken to because it made me feel like I was intelligent or a lesser person than everyone else. This feeling pushed me to try to do everything I could to learn the language. I started reading books and translating the words I didn't know. I also spent some time reading an English-to-French dictionary to increase my vocabulary. The schoolwork was also very different from the school in my home country, so it took me some time to adapt and get used to it. Another challenge I faced was that I couldn't fit in with the other students for various reasons. The fact that I didn't speak or understand English made it almost impossible for me to communicate with them. And some students were making fun of me because I was different and didn't speak English. I decided to take English learning classes so I can better at it and over time I spoke and understood it better. I wanna go to college and study physical education because I am very active and would like to help others do the same. I want to study the human body and how it works so I can help people with physical therapy. I also want to go to college for the experience and to be with others that share similar interests.

Hello, my name is Marvensky. I'm currently a senior in high school. I'm very passionate when it comes to health and fitness so I plan on going to college after high school to study health, fitness, nutrition, and physical education. I aim to become a health/fitness instructor or physical education teacher because I want to help people stay strong and healthy while doing something I'm passionate about. I strongly believe that hard work and dedication will help you succeed in anything and achieve your goals. I know that sounds like something posters or advertisements always say to encourage people into doing something but I know it’s true because it has happened to me on multiple occasions. Having that type of mindset has helped me accomplish many things in my life and will help me achieve more incredible things in the future. 7 months ago I joined the swimming club at my school because I wanted to learn to swim. On the first day, I realized that I was the least skilled out of all the students and could barely move when in the pool. I was disappointed in my performance as a swimmer and wanted to quit. But because I knew that hard work always pays off I decided to show up to every session even though I saw little to no progress after some time. I'd learn something new like how often I should move my arms and legs when swimming to save energy or how I should move my body to reduce drag after every session. Now I can swim almost like fish and can swim close to 12 laps in a row. When I reflect on how I swim now compared to when I first started I realized that I thought swimming was too hard or impossible for me to learn. But because I decided to put my time, heart, and effort into it, swimming started to make sense or be easier for me. This points out that things that seem hard and impossible to you at first will be made easy if you choose to put time, effort, and dedication into it. I believe that working hard and not giving up no matter how difficult things get to keep moving forward will help me or anyone reach their goals. I remember this quote from a poster in my middle school that said “ With hard work nothing is impossible”. I identify with this quote because whenever I try hard to achieve something no matter how difficult it is, I always end up accomplishing it. I believe this mindset will help me do well in college and become a health/fitness instructor or PE teacher in the future.