My William and Mary Essay

Does this sound okay? Question: choose an extracurricular activity from those you have listed that has been the most meaningful to you and explain why.

The extracurriclur activity from the above list that has most impacted my life would be my participation in the Step Program through my high school.

The purpose of the program is to introduce students to the experience of working in a classroom, designed to help students decide if teaching is the right proffession for them.

We have a family friend who works at Cherry Hills Christian Schools, a nearby private school. Most participants in the Step Program go to their elementary school and work with an old favorite teacher as an assistant in a class. Since I had moved to Colorado in 8th grade, we went to this family friend, and she set me up with a third grade class at her school.

I met with the asst. principle my first day, and she informed me that I would not be working as a Teacher's Aide. Every teacher at Cherry Hills has an aide, and as such they did not need me in that role. Instead, I was going to work with on e individual student who needed personal attention to catch up with her classmates.

Hiba Ibrahim was ten, a year ahead of her friends, but from her tinay frame, no one would ever have known. She and her family had escaped Sudan just the year before. I learned a lot from Hiba.

She wouldn't talk about Sudan, it was obvious that her time there had been painful. Sometimes, though, she still wrote her name in Arabic. Despite the trauma she had faced in Sudan, and from what I have heard from teachers and others at the school, there was plenty of traumatic experiences for her and her family, Hiba still smiled and laughed. Her eyes were bright with hope, joy, excitement. She still squirmed in her seat, and sometimes cried in her frustration of being so behind, but she kept trying.

I learned last year, that I am selfish. Very selfish. I am materialistic, despite my efforts not to be. I am self centered, despite concern for others. I am lazy, though I may take difficult courses in school. I am spoiled, and there I have no excuse.

Most of all, I learned that I am priviledged. I live in a very rich area of the United States-a very rich country in itself. My life is comfortable. I rarely have to work for anything. Everything is handed to me. The only thing I can ever complain about is having to pay car insurance on my parent's cars-even that is nothing.

I learned from Hiba that there are other countries out there. I knew that of course, but I learned that people undergo hard times. I knew that too, but things like Sudan can seem so distant. When I got to know Hiba, and I heard her story, it became real, and personal to me.

Yet, more importantly than just learning that the world does not revolve around me and my desires, I learned that in the midst of strife people can do amazing things. Hiba walked from Sudan to Cairo with her mother and three sisters. Four, actually, if you include the baby that her mother carried. I don't even walk to school. The few times I have walked home this year, I am hot and tired, and irritated when I reach the house. Hiba, when I asked her about walking across the desert, she smiled and shrugged, said something like "I had my sisters and mom, and we were going to find daddy."

People can do amazing things, despite their background, their so called opportunities. If I hadn't met Hiba, my eyes would never have been opened to this whole world out there that needs our help. I don't think I would ever have felt so called to reach out to the world. I want to go to North Africa now, and Chechnya in Russia where there is revolution. I want to go and help people. I don't know what I will do there, but I know, that thanks to a ten year old girl, I am going.