How Did My Failure During The Great Recession

In my lifetime, I have endured circumstances of failure that I had no control over but did the best I could under the circumstances.

During the Great Recession, my family lost our home in Cincinnati and was forced to relocate abruptly the day after Christmas 2010. Our financial struggles persisted into my freshman year of high school. At this time, I also began experiencing immense pain in my right hip. The pain became so severe that eventually I was unable to participate in most physical activities. I went through several misdiagnoses before finally being diagnosed with osteoid osteoma, a tumor within the hip socket. Doctors also found that I suffered from femoral acetabular impingement, where the ball did not fit properly into the hip socket causing extreme discomfort and inflammation of the tumor. Both conditions required an invasive hip surgery followed by a year-long recovery. The highly specialized surgery had to take place in at Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital in Dallas, Texas. My family was still living below the poverty line at the time and struggled to raise the funds to transport me to Dallas. During the years following the housing crash, we had not been able to afford healthcare or dental insurance. And now we were faced with enormous medical and travel expenses. My family received assistance from Scottish Rite Hospital and had to stay at the Ronald McDonald House for over a week during my procedure.

I have always been a dedicated, passionate student but when these financial and medical problems disrupted my everyday life and education, I began to struggle. My confidence in my academic abilities was shaken. Nothing had prepared me for such a lack of resources, financial constraints, and my health condition at such a young