Past. Present. Future.

Hello, my name is Manuel. I was born on December fifth, 1991 in the beautiful beach city of Ventura, CA. As a child I had a relatively good childhood even though we didn’t have a lot of money, my parents always reminded me to be grateful of what we had. Both my parents were immigrants from different countries. My mother is from Mexico, while my father is from El Salvador. Like most other people, they came to the United States in search of a better future, since they realized they would not have a very good future in their countries of origin. They came here separately, in their early 20’s and worked as field workers. They met each other while at work and then started dating. Soon they got married, and then had me a couple years later. I was the first of 4 children. We always had enough to get us by and my parents always instilled in my siblings and I to always be content with what we had. They seemed to live that way and we all shared in that. Early in grade school and through junior high I feel like I was a very good student. In high school though, I slipped up and started becoming lazy. My grades slipped for a couple years because I made other things the priority so I barely got by. I managed to graduate and now I'm going to college. I have made plenty mistakes throughout my teenage years and growing up, as I would imagine any teenager to do, but I don’t have many regrets because I feel like my mistakes have made a better person.

Currently I am a full time student at Oxnard College. I have had quite a bit of jobs in the past couple of years because mainly they were all temporary or did not fit my school or social schedule. I’m not exactly sure what my career path will be yet so for right now I'm taking general education courses. Lately I’ve been leaning to three career choices: business, computer technology, or something in the social work area. I live at home with my parents and four siblings. We fight at times, just like I would imagine any family to do, but I love them very much and there is nothing I would not do for them. I’ve worked some good paying jobs the last couple years which have allowed me to purchase a few things including my car. In my time off I like to work out at the boxing gym and do other physical activities, since I am a big fan off mixed martial arts. I also enjoy football among other sports. On the weekends, I like to go out to social gatherings with friends and spend time with my family. So that is what my life pretty much consists of now a day.

I’d like to finish community college in the next couple of years and from there make the decision if I want to continue on with my education. I have been told that routine builds character and you have to be very dedicated to anything if you want to succeed but I'm afraid I lack ambition at times. I’d also like to travel to some places in the world, I feel like I'm very social and friendly and I would definitely like to meet people from different parts of the world with different perspectives and see the beautiful sites around this globe. That might have to wait though because money is always an issue. I definitely want to settle down one day and start a family and be a father, but right now that is the farthest thing on my mind. I believe it takes hard work to get to the point where you want to be in life and I'm going to keep working at it until I am where I want to be.