Hello, my name is Matthew Evans and the day I was born, there were fireworks in the sky. In fact, the whole nation was celebrating that day, but they weren’t celebrating my birth. If you haven’t guessed already, I was born on Independance Day. To be exact, I was born on July 4, 2002 at 6:05am in the morning in Mission Viejo, California of a Caucasian-Hispanic mix. Everything that day wasn’t as special though. After I was born, the doctors cleaned me up and checked to see if I had inhaled any meconium a.k.a a baby’s first poop. I had in fact inhaled some and it was stuck inside my lungs. The doctors helped me by slowly lowering a tube down my throat and into my lungs so they could suck the meconium out of my body.
I left the hospital a few days later to my first home, a condo in Lake Forest, California. It was a lower-middle class neighborhood and we lived off a tight budget. Both of my parents did not finish college for different reasons. My dad dropped out of The University of California, Irvine because his mother and two of his sisters were in a terrible car accident. My grandmother and my dad’s sisters contracted severe injuries and one of my dad’s sisters contracted first stage diabetes from the trauma. My dad went to look after them while they recovered from the traumatic accident and once they had recovered, he decided to not go back to school and start his career with an associate's degree. My mother dropped out of Saddleback College, with the aspirations to become a teacher for two reasons. First, she couldn’t afford to pay for the tuition with a newborn baby adding new expenses. Second, she is an immigrant from Colombia and came to the United States after she graduated from High School and received no guidance when it came to college. I myself, respect their decisions because above all else, they put their family first.
A year and a half later, in 2004, my sister Rebekah was born and a year later with the help of my maternal grandparents we bought our first house in San Marcos. The house was big and I had my own bedroom. My mother’s family came over a lot because Colombians love to spend time with their relatives. Parties will be thrown here and there for the sole reason of coming together and spending time with each other. Family wasn’t only a big part of who I am, I was raised in a Christian home and my faith is a big part and influence in my life. We attended church every Sunday and my parents served at the church.
As a four year old boy I started attending Little Life Christian Preschool in Vista and had speech therapy because I would stutter while talking. Speech therapy knocked down this problem in my life and now I speak to others with no verbal problem. Then my parents moved me to New Venture Christian School, a private school in Oceanside where I attended through my first grade year. We were financially stable but little did we know the housing market was about to crash.
In late 2008, I started second grade at Valley Christian School, in San Marcos. That same year the housing market started crashing and as the adjustable loan brought our rate up, prices for houses were going down. My parent's mortgage was rising month after month and we were forced to short-sale our house in 2010. We slowly bounced back to that financial crisis we had been in once before.
I completed the rest of elementary school with the San Marcos Unified School District. Throughout Elementary School, I moved houses two times, and went to four different schools. I was very shy as a kid and because I continued to change schools, I didn’t have anyone in school to call “a true friend”. I secluded myself from people I didn’t know and I was always self-conscious about myself. Having to adapt to a different environment after getting used to one affected my personality and my education because every school was different. However, I always gave my best because my family was always there for me and my parents continued to encourage me. They continued to work their hardest and provide for us daily.
In the spring of 2013, my parents received an email saying that I had been accepted to High Tech Middle North County. My father was working as a contractor in Missouri and was away from us during 2012. When he returned from Missouri he was struggling to find a new job. Meanwhile my parents relationship was struggling.
When I started at High Tech Middle, I noticed improvement in my public speaking, collaboration, and other social skills that we had to apply to the projects we were doing. My education changed for the better because not only was I improving the social aspect of my life, but I was also gaining new information through a new learning style. By the end of seventh grade, I had made many new friends that are still my friends to this day. High Tech Middle was the one of the two schools that I felt I belonged to, the other being New Venture Christian School. The High Tech High Village changed my personality and has given me an open-mindset to learn in different ways.
On April 10, 2014 my sister Paloma was born to make us a family of 5. Her birth occurred around the end of my first year at High Tech Middle. That year, I learned about the different social classes and compared myself to others to see the difference. One day when we were driving home from school, I asked my mother, “What social class are we?”. After a brief moment of silence she responded, “I believe we are in the lower-middle class.” After learning the truth, my self-conscious personality returned because my friends had different things that I didn’t have. Even though I had friends, I couldn’t connect their interests with mine because of one simple object I didn’t own. I pushed my parents to get the things that my friends had and tested their patience. I was being selfish and letting society shape me into a different person.
As time passed at HTMNC, I learned that my friends didn’t care what I had or didn’t have. I learned a few lessons at the end of middle school that have changed me. The first was to always be yourself and not let society take control of your life. The second one is to cherish the people that truly care about you because they are the ones that are always there for you. For me, my parents are the ones I cherish. Even though I was selfish and didn’t accept the situation we were in, they always continued to develop the best in me. I would not be who I am today if it wasn’t for them and their gracious acts that made them heroes in my life.
In mid-2016, we bought a good-sized, quiet home in northern Escondido, where we continue to live to this day. My father now works with the biotech industry in San Diego and my mother works at an elementary school. Our financial problem has once again stabilized. Family is still a big part of my life and so are my friends now. We persevered through all of our hardship and never gave up. Family and Christianity have always been the biggest and more influential part of my life and as long as I’m with my family and continue to put Christ first, I feel at home.