Gene Denton Essay 6

 I was around 7 where my parents almost got taken by immigration, that’s when I decided I wanted to be an immigration lawyer. I’ve grown up in an immigrant household, where my parents who immigrated from El Salvador to give our family a better life, we have been taught to be tough and hard working. Seeing my parents work hard to provide for me and my sister throughout my whole life to the present, I want to take that opportunity and make me and my family proud. Now, I know you think, I do everything for my parents? No, I work for myself and what I strive to become.

 The person who taught me to strive for better is my older cousin, Dimas Velasquez. He taught me to work hard and strive for a better life even when it gets hard. I remember he would always work hard throughout his life and would see the accomplishments he made. It made me want to be like him, but then I realized, I am my own person and I make my accomplishments along with my legacy. He told me on my 17th birthday to be better than him. I live by that not because I want to be better than him, but because he is very dearest to me and my biggest supporter in the family other than my parents. I always held onto the discipline that my family taught me, which worked but stressed me out in the end where I put my standards too high and when something goes wrong, I disappoint myself. But I later learned to accept and move on, which is the hardest thing I’ve learned. Which brings me to why I do speech and debate. It’s taught to not put my standards high and to work at your own pace. When I first wanted to choose my POI topic, I thought about what brings my character out, and I thought of the immigrant experience I grew up on and the struggles that come with it. I one day searched up colleges in Missouri that have speech and debate, and Truman State University stood out the most to me. It’s been a dream to go to that University to not only major in Political Science or Pre-law, but to join their amazing speech and debate program because that’s what I am most passionate about! I genuinely believe that Truman State University is the college I’d LOVE to attend and would be an honor to go there and make myself proud. My plans would be to graduate college with a bachelor’s degree and go to law school to continue my education and get my masters and be one of the 8% of Latinos to earn a master’s degree and if God lets me, I want to get a Juris Doctorate degree and become a juvenile judge later in the years after being a lawyer . I want to be a licensed immigration lawyer to give other families an opportunity to other immigrants who want to give a better life for their family so their children have the opportunity to make themselves out of something they are passionate about.