Sample Student Response Paper
Lives on the Boundary
Many immigrants travel to the United States in search for a better future. Most of these
immigrants have to build their way up in America, so they start off very poor. It takes courage
and bravery to come to a foreign country that you do not know anything about and try to start a
new life. For most of us, this was either ourselves or our ancestors making that brave decision.
Everyone born in America, like myself, needs to appreciate the people that sacrificed to give us
the lives we are living today and have to stay focused to take advantage of the opportunities they
have given us.
Mike Rose describes the problems he went through with his family in the second chapter
of his book, Lives on the Boundary. He tells us about the hardships his parents went through
when trying to give him a better future. Even though his father’s business went bankrupt, they
still kept trying by moving to California in search for a brighter future. Both his parents
sacrificed in order to get Rose the best education they could afford. His mother sacrificed a lot
for Rose by getting a late night job and giving up her engagement ring in order to pay for the
down payment on their house. According to Rose, “life in America was not what the promoters
had told her father it would be.”(Rose 11) Rose’s parents were very brave for sacrificing all they
did for Rose to get a better education for his future.
After all his parents did for him, Rose still struggled in school. He got put into remedial
classes and he kept falling behind. When his father passed away from a stroke, his situation just
got worse. That’s when he met Jack Macfarland, his 12th grade English teacher. Macfarland
became his role model and Rose started to turn his life around. Jack Macfarland gave Rose the
support he needed to get interested in school. Macfarland helped Rose by pulling a few strings
and getting him into his former undergraduate college, Loyola University. When Macfarland
helped Rose get a loan, it was official that Rose would be the first person in his family to finish
high school and go to college.
People that have sacrificed their happiness to give me a better life are my family
members. My grandmother is one person in particular that sacrificed for my whole family. After
losing my grandfather in an accident, she decided to come to America with nine children.
Imagine coming to America without any clue of how it’s like and not knowing how to read or
write a word of English. My grandmother did not have any support from anyone except for her
children, especially her oldest son. My uncle had to step up and become a fatherly figure to his
eight younger siblings while working two jobs. After years of poor living he finally saved up
enough money to open a business of his own and support his siblings by helping them go to
college and start lives for themselves. Without my grandmother, my whole family would have
stayed back in Lebanon and I would not be getting a quality education like I am getting today.
Mike Rose and I are similar in these situations because we were not the ones making the
decision to come to the United States, we are just the ones acquiring the benefits of living in the
United States. Both of us have to make the actions of our ancestors count by making the most of
the opportunities given to us and get a quality education. After all, if we are not successful, then
there was absolutely no point for our ancestors coming to America in the first place. If our
ancestors took the initiative of coming to America to give us a better life, then we should do the
same and repay them with success. When Mike Rose says that his parents would always tell him
to go to college and become a doctor, he never took it seriously and describes it as “a bit of
supportive family chatter.”(Rose 34) Parents are always going to support their children, but in
this case I believe that his parents are being completely serious. Maybe they did not specifically
care if he became a doctor, but it was just their way of saying they want him to become
successful.
Just because we are living in America it does not guarantee our success. If a person
thinks that they have way too many problems to handle, they have to remember that they are not
alone. Everyone goes through troubles in life and those who overcome their problems are the
ones who usually find success. It is always easier to overcome your problems when there are
people supporting and really care about you. In Rose’s case, he not only had his families support,
but he also had the support of Jack Macfarland. Rose was lucky to have a teacher that cared
about him and wanted to see him be successful. Macfarland could have just treated Rose like any
other student and went on with his everyday life and Rose probably would have never gone to
college, but he really cared about Rose and was a big part of his success. For the people without
a supportive figure in their lives, it is going to be even more of a struggle, but if we did not have
hardship involved in our lives then there is no reason to even try and become successful.
With all of the immigrants that come to the United States every year, it is likely that most
of us had ancestors that were not born in the United States. They all came to America with one
common goal, a better and brighter future. There are many people that just take it for granted and
forget about the struggle and sacrifice our ancestors went through to get us here. We still have
hardships and difficult times in our lives, but our problems are nothing compared to the problems
our ancestors went through when traveling to the United States. I believe that we should be
reading more stories like Mike Rose’s because it reminds us of what we have and why we have
it.