My American Dream

My American Dream

Anthony Roncone
The American Dream
To me, the American Dream is the achievement of success. Success itself can be defined in numerous ways, such as reputation, wealth, family recognition/acceptance, or completing a feat or spectacle that will go down in history. But for me, achieving success (The American Dream) is a very self-oriented set of goals: gaining a slightly admirable relationship with my colleagues, becoming independent of everything possible (people and things), and to be able to grow to understand the world around me.
Quite often in my life, fitting in was devastating both to my self-esteem and my ability to adapt. Because of this, I began to strive toward acceptance and normality socially in order to satisfy my lust for a healthy environment of friendships. In my early life, I was accepted by my peers quite easily, mostly because of the fact that we bonded through growing up together. However, after I turned 11, I was transferred from my school in Boardman to Columbiana Exempted Village Schools. To me, this was an almost foreign environment that I was too frightened to try to make contact with. Kids that were not already accepted into a “social group”, but did try to interact with the current students by acting out in class, doing seemingly senseless acts, and just being a little “too confident” up front were usually denied and quickly put down and cast out by the social groups. I felt that the best action I could do in order to make friends, was to make as little wake as possible. This worked well for a while, but I yearned for the same type of understanding I had at my old school and that I observed was going on at Columbiana between students that were there earlier (a lot of the time, I felt left out when kids I talked to would say, “Hey do you remember that time in 4th grade…” and everyone would connect on that thought- except me since I entered the school in the 6th grade). In order to quench this social thirst, I made my move...