A college paper about my story

Recently, I wrote a paper for one of my classes in which I told about my story and my influenced for both my personal and professional lives. Here is a reproduction of the written piece:

“'Vedi, vini, vici' (I came, I saw, I conquered). The famous phrase told by Roman Emperor Julius Caesar expressed the stages of our lives, in which we come unto scene, see what may be ahead in terms of obstacles to our goals, and fight to conquer what we had planned. In other words, we show on the battlefield to achieve our objectives and to fight for and to reach our goals, no matter what we do in life. That what happened to the writer of this quite short essay, a man that has thrived to achieved long-pursued goals and that is finally starting to reach them, one day at a time.

            I am Gabriel Neves, a 30 year-old Bachelor of Law/Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication to be, born in the city of Porto Alegre, south of Brazil, in the already distant year of 1982, who is pursuing a career that has been nourished and cherished since early ages: Journalism and television.

            My life has been a constant fight to achieve things and I can say I’ve gotten over many things. Usually, I am a quiet person, a man of very few words. This issue has been a problem during my childhood and throughout my teenage years. During most of my life, I had been going through therapy that proven to be successful here, with visible improvements in social skills and other everyday life issues. In exact terms, I’ve been in therapy for 23 years and I can say I made several improvements from that time to now.

            Most of my education was obtained in Brazil, where I went to High School and graduated in Law, about 6 years ago, in January 2007. Different of here, Law in Brazil is an Undergraduate program, as well as Medicine, in which you can go from High School straight to either Law or Medical schools. I was influenced by my mother, who told me that Journalism was a ticket to starvation. She convinced me to deny all the things I did when I was a kid, since speaking in front of a mirror pretending to be a news anchor, to using a watering can and a hose posing as camera and microphone. When I started studying Law, especially at the 3^rd year of studies, I realized that I had no talent neither guts for that profession. That was when I started trying to study Communication in America, something I always wanted to do. And not only studying, but living in America, which I’ve always had the desire to do and the goal to achieve. Much of this influence came by a movie I watched for the first time when I was 15: “Moscow on the Hudson”, directed by Paul Mazursky, tells the story of Vladimir, a musician from Russia that, upset with the Socialist standard of living and the lack of freedom, decides to get an asylum in the US while on tour with the circus he plays for. Those brave citizens, who fled totalitarian regimes to pursue freedom and happiness, are my major influences, mostly because they had the courage to change the status quo and build a new life.

            Back to the college issue, I kept trying for almost 8 years. I’ve been in America a few other times, in 1998, 2002, 2004 (when I went in an exchange program in Pennsylvania), 2008 (my first time in Utah), and 2009 (my last time in the country as a tourist). I eventually graduated from Law School and I spent 4 months in London, where a theft made me come back to Brazil and led me to depression (which only ended with the trip to Utah). In the meantime, a few office jobs and the attempt to work for Brazilian government (which I hate due to its inefficiency) were my lifelines.

            One of the facts that contributed for my moving to America was that I was victim of violent crime. It was July 5^th, 2009, I was driving a brand new SUV my mother had bought, carrying my young brother. When pulling to the home driveway, 3 men with weapons approached the car and stole it. One of the thieves punched me in my head. I don’t know how I survived, only by a miracle perhaps. And that was the final warning for me to get off of the place I was not happy.

            My admission to the University of Utah took place in January 2010 and I started the program in May of the same year. It’s been some great times, where I met people and I had a much better college experience, with better quality education in comparison to the one I had in Brazil.

            To conclude, I can say I am a winner and a fighter. The Latin phrase said it all about my life: a mix of joy and grief, but that gives me the strength to fight for the greater good always. My life is the best battle I will ever face."