Personal Narrative: My Mother

        On the backstage, I couldn't stop pounding of my heart, and my body kept shivering. It was the most nervous moment in my life. To relive my nervousness, I thought about the moments that my volunteering team practiced for this performance.

After few moments it was my team's turn to be on stage. As the leader of the team, I lead the team members to middle of the stage where all attention was focused. I started the performance with the strong beat of my drums. At that time, I put all my efforts and passion in to the rhythm making one piece of harmonized music.
Finally, it was all finished. My team got applause from the audiences and I was so proud and confident about myself that I actually accomplished this.
However, few months before, I wasn't the type of person who is very confident about myself. I was totally different, always depressed and had no enthusiasm.

 

        I was a normal boy who lives in Korea, and had a normal life as others but when my family decided to move to US my life got tangled. In the middle school, my grades were all low almost getting 'F', and I had no friends at all. This was so definite because I couldn't speak, write, read English as fluent as Americans which made me to act passive. As my exhausting school life continued for months, I almost got the blues. My mom was also worried about me. She wanted to help me out but it was hard to find a solution in a new environment.

 

        One day, my mother came to me and said "Since you like to volunteer for others, let's volunteer for people who need your help". I was concerned about myself 'Will I be able to volunteer in a foreign country?'.But on the next day, after hours of thinking, I decided to do it. My mother began to search for Koreans who are interested in volunteering to form a group. And as the oldest in that group, I got the position of team leader.

 

        My team practiced many performances such as taekwondo, and samulnori(Korean traditional music) for six months and the day came. After the performance, our team got famous by doing Korean traditional performances for volunteering. Many city newspapers and Korean broadcasting channel came to our group and started to interview. It was the best day in my life, and also the turning point to be confident about myself being passionate.

 

        Now, I'm so thankful to my mom who put so many effort for me to have self-confidence. And this couldn't be done without her help. This is my experience that I can't ever forget which gave me an opportunity to go beyond myself.