“My dream isn’t to become the best. It’s to become someone who I’m not ashamed to be.”

• SHINee, Key

Hello! My Name is Ana Maldonado Calix and I’m a senior. The beginning of my life starts on September 13, 2005, the day I was born. I’m from Honduras, a country in Central America. My country is known for being in the top 10 dangerous countries in the world. I don’t know how I survived but, here we are! At the start of my life, it was good until I became 4. At that time was when my mother came to the USA. I was left alone with my father. He was young and didn’t know how to be a father. My mom is 52 and my dad is 36. Yes, they have a lot of age differences but one thing that they always teach me is that when we love nothing can separate us. In Honduras, it was normal to be in private schools. The expectation was bigger for us than the other schools. Normally, the school was always inside a home or someone’s company. It was always paying for the cost of school, books, uniforms, transportation, food, every month, taking the final test, and things that teachers wanted us to bring. For example, toilet paper, medicine, markers, and other things that I always thought it was their work to bring. But, for the students, our education was just something that was impossible to do. The same class, the same subject, and the same teacher over and over. The education was not that good for making it to college, but good to survive in the streets. Since I came to this country my education has improved on a large scale, even if it is hard, I try. In 2016 I started liking a type of music called k-pop. At the start, people thought that I was weird because I didn’t understand what they were saying. Yes, it was in another language but it’s the same with English, I tried my best to understand and to know what the song was about. I don’t speak Korean but I would like to do it and yes part of my learning English was for listening and trying to understand what they were saying. The quote at the beginning is from a famous kpop singer from the group SHINee named Key. What I like about this quote is that it tells all my life in just two sentences. My dream is to be someone that I’m not ashamed to be, someone that I can see in the mirror and say that I like how I am, not be sad about how I am, and not change because someone tells me to do it. So, my name is Ana Maldonado, a person that likes kpop and my favorite colors are black and purple. I like who I am. If someone doesn’t like it I’m okay with that and if they like it I’m okay with that. But, I will not change how I am just because someone doesn’t like me.