Sincerely Chenelle

  The summer of 2017, I participated in the Summer Work and Travel Program. This program allowed me to work and live in the United States of America for a little over 3 months on a J1 Visa. The main aim of the program is to learn more about American culture by having first-hand experience through living amongst their people. However, this program turned out to be way better than what I had expected. I learned so much and had a wonderful experience that I intend to go back next summer. The company I worked with hired 9 students, four of us were from Jamaica, two from the Philippines, one from Kazakhstan and two from Ukraine. This program is described as a cultural exchange, between American culture and your own culture. But through this program I was learning about more than just the American culture. I shared a home with two Filipino girls, so their culture was one that I came in direct contact with. I loved learning new things from them and they were such amazing person...

  I Wish I Were Her   I wish I was only three months older to tell the current me that everything now happening was all meant to be. To wipe her tears and give her long hugs, After all, my love is the best love. Everything I'm going through is only for a time That twisting at the bottom of my stomach All the blank stares The tight contracting in my throat won't always be there. Three months older me is happy And she laughs about today She tells the story with tears in her eyes Tearing up from laughter, and then she will say "That day I lost my laptop charger, I was so distraught but look at this whole new laptop that I just bought." About the Poem That's all I wrote that night it could be better but I penned it in just 10 minutes. Before I started writing I was feeling terrible because a lot had happened the day before, so my sadness was at the peak because of something you might think is so small. It was through writing down my feelin...

Today I realized how the accomplishment of a simple goal can make you feel so wonderful. It doesn't have to be something major as long as it is something you have been wanting to do for a while and for some reason you just kept putting it off. When you finally muster the strength to go and cross that thing off your list you get a sense of relief and happiness. Well, that's what happened to me and I'm 90% sure it will happen to you too. Currently I'm attending University and I'm not working but I always love saving which I usually do out of my weekly allowance. But I find myself not being able to keep my savings for more than 3weeks then it's all gone. I knew that I want my saving to be long term so today I went to the bank and deposited a half of my allowance. It felt so good; and I thought, what if everyday I did something like this, crossing something off my to do list. Eventually, I'll be so in love with this feeling and want to keep accomplishing. S...

It's the end of the first semester and well it has been a rough three months mostly due to my procrastination for exams. As for making friends, that didn't work out, instead I learned to enjoy my own company and reconnected with a friend from high school. However, I have made a list of goals for next semester aimed at improving my grades and the whole university experience in general. This is an outline of my goals for next semester:  First and fore most my grades need to improve. My GPA is not bad but I don't want to be average or just about average, I want to make the honor roll next semester and that will require a lot of studying well in advance of finals. My university provide us with a gym and a pool we can use free which sadly, I have never been to. When school begins January I will go to the gym regularly and get in shape. The pool has life guards there who offer swimming lessons, hopefully 2016 will be the year I learn how to swim; so many people have tried ...

It’s my first year of University and it has been a bitter-sweet experience so far. It’s nice that I have all this freedom to live on hall, away from my parent’s in a new city, not needing permission to do what I want to; but sometimes I wonder if it’s really freedom although I am free. In high school I had a handful of friends who I looked forward to seeing and sharing different stories and jokes from my life. Now, there’s no one. I don’t have those friends anymore, we grew up and everyone’s life took a different path, we hardly get to see each other. I guess I could say I have one friend, my boyfriend. But does he count as a friend? I can’t share my life story with him because he’s actually the only story I have right now. I spend half of my days with him, the other half at class. We can’t talk about girly things because he’s a man and we don’t really have that much in common in terms of interest. In high school, I thought University would be fun, I had everything p...