I am the first grandchild of immigrant grandparents on my mom’s side. All of my immediate family on her side were born in Jamaica. My grandmother and her three daughters, including my mother, who was 15 when they came to the United States for more job opportunities and better education. During my younger years, I spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s house because my mom was working in another state and had to leave early in the morning. My days at my grandmother’s house consisted of stories she would tell me about her life growing up in Jamaica and the dreams she had for me as her first grandchild. She taught me how important education is and how I should always be grateful for what I have. And once you work for success or knowledge, that can never be taken from you. My mother taught me the same lessons and worked long hours, sacrificing her time and money to ensure everything I needed was provided. She prioritized sending me to a private school for better education, and I promised myself I would make her sacrifice worth it.

        Growing up, my childhood was not what most people would call average. I did not have a traditional American family. My home was always a mixture of Jamaican and American, but to me, this was normal. It was when I started school that I realized how different I was. From a young age, both my mother and grandmother began teaching me things from the alphabet to numbers to provide me with an advantage when I started school. Before, I found it a waste of time and would have instead played outside; however, it is now that I love and am grateful to them for giving me that extra push. Due to my diverse upbringing, I did not know most of the things other kids at school liked, nor was I interested. I enjoyed learning about things I did not know and would rather spend my time alone than in a crowd. All I wanted to do was be the best and become successful in and out of school.

As the years went by, I learned how different I was from everyone else, from the food I ate to how I talked. Everything about me was different, and I was not too fond of this part of myself for a while. One time that has stuck with me even now was when I brought lunch which was Chickenfoot with rice and beans. When the rest of my classmates saw my lunch, their remarks of ‘how can you eat that?’ or ‘that looks gross’ made me change my lunches to more American meals like PB&J sandwiches and chicken nuggets. The way I spoke was unusual; I would pronounce certain words with a distinct ‘r’ sound and would also not speak in proper grammar. During this time, I learned the hard lesson that asking for help does not make you any less of a person. Instead, everyone struggles with something, and no one is perfect. I struggled with the idea that I could not be perfect for a while. Thinking perfection was the only way to reach that level of success for my family, to prove to them that their sacrifice was not done in vain. It takes time to accept another culture as your own; this I know from experience. I have successfully learned to fuse my Jamaican and American cultures into one. I now know that being unique and different is what I am. I am different and unique because of both my cultures, and I do not need to change who I am to become successful.