Corey King
Professor Johnson
English 100
07 April 2015
Life’s Power Curve
Co-Captain of the wrestling team, maintaining good grades, attending honor classes and the world was still my oyster. As my junior year came to a close, at my high school at Proviso West in Chicago, Illinois, I felt like I had the world still in the palm of my hands after passing my ACT, exams, and all my other tests I needed to past and qualify for graduation with flying colors. Majority of my friends were getting college letters from left to right and bragging about their new scholarships and grants. They were so sure they were to be accepted to all these different schools and universities all over the country and going to interviews and deciding their majors. Meanwhile, I was still doing my own thing running around and skating with my friends’ downtown, who were a grade or two lower than me, going to wrestling practice, dance competitions, without putting a second thought about college or where to apply to. I always figured that when the time gets here everything will all fall into place around me.
Needless to say, I was behind the “Power Curve” on catching up to my peers and so when I became a senior I just started looking into schools, scheduling interviews, and applying for grants and applications. Before I go any further, a Power Curve is a common military term basically meaning that you’re behind everyone one else in the means of being caught up with what’s currently going on or training. So many letters from different schools came in telling me I have been denied, but I didn’t give up. Towards the middle of the school year I got an interview with DeVry University in the area and so my had grants and scholarships had processed so my first year would be paid for my first academic year. So around the time of everyone getting their driving hours done to get their license, somehow in the mist of the Drivers Education program heard there was the possibility to record your hours with a parents and that’s the route I decided to take. The last few hours of driving before my father and I went to the DMV so I to obtain my license, come to find out that was not how things went in Illinois, so whatever I heard that day in class to lead me to this very moment to believe I could record my hours with my father, I was wrong, my hours were voided right there on the spot which lead me to be behind another “Power Curve” of my own doing with no one to blame but myself. That Power Curve led to another with the DeVry University situation, I was aware that DeVry University wasn’t exactly a school to brag about, but I was happy about it and felt very accomplished, so I bragged to my friends and family, but due to that error I made in drivers education program made me not account for one critical flaw in my plan.
That flaw was that I lived almost an hour away from DeVry University but they did have apartments for rent near the campus at a student discounted rate, but I couldn’t negate the fact that I never held a job, so I had no saved up revenue for an apartments. Little to my knowledge even though in my mind my scholarships would cover everything, since I never fully understood how scholarships worked. I found out soon enough those apartments were not in my lane of financial accessibility. So it would be from home to school for me, which I had no problem with but the fact I didn’t have a license but found out from my Dad I could drive his truck to the University…as long as I came up with $900 to put down to be accepted on his insurance, I didn’t have a job or had done anything to have my own money, pocket change here and there, but I wouldn’t be able to obtain that kind of money by the time school’s fall semester started. At this point in my life I’ve been hitting “Power Curve” after “Power Curve” and was bit lost on what I was going to do and it was hard to settle into the fact I was growing up and had some grown up decisions to make in a hurry. As all my friends