1. Aljaid 1
My life turning point
Parents always encourage their children to be a part of an activity or a club. It all
happened when I was 4th grade; I was new to the area since we used to live in a
different neighborhood. I felt uneasy to have to go through all that making friends
again. At time I heard about a club where people gather people who want to get
more knowledge than a normal student will do. It’s main goal is to make more
interesting person out of you. Also improve you intellectually and having fun at the
same time in a competitive environment were goals for this club as well. This club
affected me in terms of personality, family and socializing. When I read their flyer it
mentioned something about building your personality, which reminded me of my
father story.
My father left home when he was 18 years old to another city for his higher
education. He was in a new city with no relative or friends to being with; he was
studying at morning and working on evenings. He would start his day at 7Am and be

2. Aljaid 2
done by 9PM for all the four years. My father is my role model; but I couldn’t
imagine myself doing the same thing at that time. At that moment I make my call to
do my best to make the best out of my life that’s why I joined the club. In this essay I
will be discussing how this decision affected me as a person, how it changed my
relationship with my family and how it resulted in enhancing my interaction skills
with people.
Our personality is one major part of which defines us. People would live on the
same set of principals for the rest of their life unless they were strongly influenced
by their surroundings. Building your personality is like building skyscraper one
brick at a time. There are aspects where this club has transformed me, my activity
level, leadership skills and my personal advantage and disadvantage to level up. This
club has many students enrolled in different programs and different levels of
education. Although the school ends at 2 PM on weekdays, we would stay in the
school until 4:30 Pm. The concept of this club mainly focused on improving and
building our own control of our life in terms of education, personality and creativity.
Furthermore, after I signed up with this group, I spent my daytime in school going
through a lot of information in History, general knowledge and academic subjects as
well. I had fun, however, due to the competition where the teacher would split us
into groups and establish a game to test our knowledge. In order to test our
expertise, most of these games involved moving around physically such as
scavenger hunts. Being out of my comfort zone and being a part of these activities
reduced my laziness to nothing. Moreover, here is a case in point; we were going on
a camping trip to another city as a club activity. I was part of the group responsible

3. Aljaid 3
to set up games and knowledge testers. We had to meet at least one time every two
days to set up the whole program starting from our arrival until departure. In that
week, I had a lot of things to accomplish such as making new games, setting a
scavenger hunt and preparing subjects to talk about during the educational session
in a specific time frame but I overworked to get my part done. Changes in my
routine have influenced my behavior and changed a lot in me. Another aspect was
building the foundation to my leadership skills and enhancements of these skills.
However, I wasn’t a natural leader but I have a lot of knowledge of all people in
there. Because of that, I became more involved in with a lot of responsibility.
Leadership was limited to specific people in that club. Therefore, I made my way in
by being social and the ability to make tough decisions. To illustrate this, here is an
example of my first leading experience. I was in an academic competition and I lead
a group of five people to the first place, and it was challenging due to a lot of
arguments and different opinions. At that point, I had to make a strict and
reasonable decision, where my group had to be divided depending on their strength
in each subject. My last aspect that I discovered was my strengths and weaknesses.
We can be aware of our best features as we keep going in our life. My advantage and
disadvantages was acknowledged when I was in sixth grade. I had a lot of seminars
that focused on improving specific regions of myself, which was held by my club
during summer. During my time in this club, I figured that one of my strengths was
the fact that my background in history was astonishing. It was because, during my
free time in home, I read more than 10 books during my childhood and each book
had more than 300 pages. I used to spend a lot of time in my father’s library when I

4. Aljaid 4
was 10 years looking for something interesting to kill some time. I found a history
book, where it has more than 2000 pages, and it took me about 4 months to finish it.
After that, whenever I asked my father to give me money to buy new books he was
happy, he even gave me the couple of books that he has.
My relationship with my family changed in different ways. First, my parents
were happy with the idea of me joining a club. They loved my initiation to make a
change and starting to work on myself. They were supportive and my father was in
contact with teachers in my club. I remember once there was a trip to another city
and in the middle of that trip was my cousin’s wedding, so my father allowed me to
go and took care of the ticket to get back in the same day of the wedding. My family
always has my best interest, however, I make my own calls. Secondly, I would spend
a lot more time away from home, which made my house much quieter. I used to live
my life isolated from people due to the awkwardness of many situations and my
love of watch TV was more than being with people. Although, I was a noisy little kid
who would start a fight anytime anywhere. But after joining the club, I wasn’t
around to cause any trouble. By that, my family had the time to pay attention to my
siblings. Finally, giving a hand in the house, I would help my siblings with their
homework if they needed help. However, I don’t stay at home a lot of times but the
time I spend with them is a quality time. It’s normal for my siblings to come and ask
for help but normally I wouldn’t help them out. But since I joined this club, I worked

5. Aljaid 5
with them with their problems and I was having fun doing it. I am always trying to
buy my family back in every way possible as a sign of my affections and apparitions.
Communicating with each other is one of many ways to build a solid
reputation. Social skills are one of many subjects that interest people in how to
speak with people and how to charm them. People tend to read books to improve
their social skills. In my case, I learned that through this club in three ways. My first
step was starting conversations. I was a shy person at the beginning; I didn’t feel
that I’m getting along with people, which made it very hard to be part of it. I had
limited connections with teachers so that’s why it took me all of my courage to start
a conversation with a stranger. My first friend, inside the group, was the same age as
me and we usually challenge each other in everything starting with material to
soccer. With this step, I started getting into the group. One of the many lessons I
have learned was that you have to take the first move and be a risk taker. Secondly, I
have made a lot of friends. As I stated in the second paragraph, I wasn’t a social
person. Nevertheless, I started to build my social fortress in elementary school; by
high school, I have known every single person in my school. When I got to Arizona
State University, I met at least two guys that I have known before coming to the US.
Although I had no idea there were here. It’s always good to make new friends or
acquaintances, the more connection you have the better. Finally, I overcome my
gloss phobia. I had always feared talking in public, especially to a group of people, I
would be nervous and I would make a lot of mistakes in terms of grammar or
pronunciation. In this club, they would assign specific subjects to us to present
about in the next meeting. By a year these assignments have shown me their result,

6. Aljaid 6
when my history teacher pick me to deliver a speech to my classmate. I have
improved up to twice as I used to be. My take over of this is No matter what the
issue is I can overcome it. Gloss phobia was my first step and a reminder of how
much willpower I have.
Overall, My life took an interesting twist after I joined this group, in terms of
character, family and public life. It shaped me as individual, boost my life with
people and family. My characterization was converted to be energetic, leader like
and well aware of my flaws and blessing. My family were amazed and relieved by
how much I do, due to that I devoted most of my time in this club and spent quality
time with my family. My public life was founded by my conversation starter,
friendship and weakened my fears as well. If it weren’t for this group, my life would
take a difficult path instead rather this interesting one.