Kristoff Reading Reflection

        Article: U.S.A, Land of Limitations?
   Author: Nicholas Kristof
   Type of Post: Reflection

              This article I feel is very strongly related to me. I am from Pawtucket, Rhode Island and I am the first of my family to attend college. I feel as though they have very high hopes for me, which honestly stresses me out a lot, but I am focusing turning my dreams into goals and I will succeed. My grandparents grew up very poor and learned how to make the most of what they had. They lived by the phrase, "waste not, want not" and even though they are past though hard times, they still continue to live on these words today. My Mom wants so much for me, I think out of everyone she is the one who is pushing me the most. It is a very hard journey, I feel that most people that are in my shoes feel the pressure. The pressure of letting not just their families and their future children, or maybe even present children, but themselves as well. It is almost like the world is rooting for your failure but you have to prove it wrong. It is extremely tough, and I have friends who have more opportunity's than I have, offers to pay their children through school, and they do not take it. They stay at home with their family and have their parents just pay their way through everything. My mom would kill me, honestly. This text makes me think about how life is not fair and maybe there is a way that people who are in the lower class have a better chance of making it to the top. Everyone deserves an equal chance to succeed and it is not fair that, that is not the way of the world. If you check out my city's statistics, you will see that out of Pawtucket, only 17.6 percent of the people living here have earned a bachelors degree or higher. 

If you see in this image that I found, Rhode Island does not have the highest amount of college graduates. Maybe there is something we can do to help more students push through and succeed. 

  My points that I will discuss in the next class are one, are there any ways that we can help these statistics go up? How can we make it so people can move up the ladder? It truly is not fair how people do not go through life with the same opportunities. Second, I want to talk about how it is true how everyone goes through life differently. It is hard to understand why people do things when you can't see inside their heads. It is just like we read with Delpit, some people have power and just are better set up for success while others aren't as lucky. It really all has to do with who's family you are born into. White, black, rich, poor, it has everything to do with how you live with life and how you see the world around you.