Make 'Em Proud

With the Martin Luther King holiday coming up, I have been doing a lot of thinking. It has got me thinking about where I am at in life and where I plan on going in life. This Holiday is also making me very aware of how thankful I am of all the opportunities I have been blessed with.

My name is RaShaun Jasmine Downs. I am an African American female born in Baltimore, Maryland but raised in Sumter, South Carolina. I am 19 years old and a junior at Winthrop University. I am majoring in mass communications, specializing in broadcasting. My dream is to become a news reporter.

I am so grateful for my mother, my father, and my older brother. Whenever school has me feeling down and out and just ready to give up, I just think about them and how proud I want to make them by finishing college and achieving my goals. They were not as fortunate as me to have this opportunity and college experience. Seeing the smiles on their faces when they see my grades and just how hard I am truly trying is just a joy to me.

I am not only doing this (college) to make my family proud but I also feel like I owe it to all of the people, like Martin Luther King Jr., who fought and shed blood, sweat, and tears for a united nation and equality. I owe it to them to show them that they did not go through all of that for nothing. I want to make a difference in this world somehow just like the great others before me.
Of course I am doing this for me as well, to make myself proud, but when I think about it, it is really for my future family. I want my future family to live a prosperous, secure life. With me getting a higher education, it puts me one step closer.

I don't know. I guess a long story short, my family, the great ones who came before me and fought for the many rights I have today, and my future family of my own is what gives me the drive to make them proud and finish college, go back for my masters, then even go back for my doctorate and hopefully get my dream job being a news reporter. Whenever I begin to feel like giving up, I will just think about all of them.

I will make them proud!