The American Dream is the ideal of equality of opportunity to achieve one's goals and have a better life. Many people have a dream, but not everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve it. Achieving the American Dream isn’t easy because it requires one to work hard and overcome obstacles that occur along the way. Everyone has a dream, but it’s not easily achieved for some. My American Dream is to have a stable job so I can prosper myself, buy my own home, build a family, and help out my parents, It might not be easy to achieve but with sacrifices, dedication, and faith everything is possible.
An obstacle that one might have to overcome to realize the American Dream can be moving to a new place and having to learn a new language, make new friends, or find a new job. For instance, my father, Rogelio Valencia, at 18 came to the U.S. from México. It was difficult for him to adapt to the lifestyle in the U.S. because there are many different cultures compared to the one he was used to. He also had to leave behind many friendships and family once he was here in the U.S. he realized this was a new start for him. I’m blessed for not having to go through this problem because I’ve been living in the same place for 13 years. Sometimes in life, it’s okay for one to make new changes and start new/all over again. Making a change offers one new opportunity.
A difficult challenge to overcome when attempting to realize the American Dream is learning a different language. My father came to the U.S., only knowing how to speak Spanish, it was difficult for him to communicate with other people. It became a problem, but he then, later on, learned to speak some English, it wasn’t fluent but he was able to communicate better. He learned in a job he got where everyone spoke English, he had to learn because he needed to communicate with his coworkers and clarify things when he wasn’t sure of something. I am fortunate to have grown up in a place where English is taught to kids at a young age and didn’t have to struggle with learning a new language at a later time like my father. There are obstacles in the way of achieving the American Dream, but in order for one to achieve it, one has to grow and overcome the difficult moments. The obstacles one once went through are what makes the person who they are at the time of achieving the American Dream.
An obstacle that many people face when coming to a new place to realize the American Dream is settling for less because one feels that one can’t achieve or do better. My godfather’s sister, for instance, is a single mother of three children, She only cleans about 2 houses a week and once she has enough money to get by the week she stops. She conforms herself to whatever she can make with the least houses possible as long as she can have enough for the week. I started working this year and I’ve come to realize that making $18/hr in the Bay Area isn’t enough because of how expensive it is. I don’t want to work for the rest of my life at a minimum-wage job and settle for that. I want to be able to have a well-paid job that I’m interested in. Being able to work at a job that allows me to cover my monthly expenses as well as save up for any emergency is important for one to do. It’s important to overcome those obstacles by trying and doing new and better things. If one doesn’t overcome the obstacles then one will just be stuck at the same point for the rest of their life. One should never settle for less but rather for more.
Poverty is an obstacle for many people to realize the American Dream. Many people don’t have money or might come from a low-income family where money becomes an issue and it doesn’t let them reach their goal(s). Erin and Sarah, in their article, “It takes a village to support the American Dream” say that “Kids raised at the bottom of the economic ladder who move out of the bottom as adults are also more financially secure than their childhood peers who remain stuck there.” What Erin and Sarah stated reminded me of middle school where I was friends with people that started to not like the lifestyle they were living. The people I was friends with took the easy route of selling drugs because they saw that money was coming to them very easily and now they were able to get what they wanted a different lifestyle. I understood how desperate they were to fulfill their needs, but that wasn’t the path I wish they had taken. I grew up having the same issues where I wanted so much at a young age but it wasn’t possible for my parents to give me everything I wished for. In my senior year, once I turned 18 I waited about 2 months after where I then applied to work for the district where
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