8B My Beloved World

“If you wait, nothing will come”

As an incoming freshman, this summer I had to read My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor. When I was reading this book I wasn’t sure why it was assigned to all freshmen. I thought it just had to do with how Sonia was the first Hispanic and third woman who was ever appointed to the United States Supreme Court, but it actually shared some good lessons. Growing up Sonia faced many challenges; she lost her father at an early age as well as her grandmother. Another thing that changed her life forever was when she was diagnosed with diabetes at such a young age.

Growing up and learning that you have diabetes at such a young age can be tough and everyone deals with it differently. Sonia happened to deal with it much better than most would. She had to inject insulin into herself everyday, she hated doing it and no one wanted to actually inject it into her. Sonia quickly learned that she needed to learn to do this herself if she was going to do it everyday. That alone shows how brave she was and she didn’t dwell on the fact that she was unlucky and got diabetes instead she looked at the problem and faced it. I think it’s important for first year college students to learn about her experience. Being freshmen in college, a lot is changing were away from home and adults now, were also taking harder courses and surrounded by thousands of people we don’t know yet. With so much going on at once it’s easy to get overwhelmed by it all. By reading Sonia’s story you see that she faces a lot of challenges but what’s important to notice is she overcame all of them. She dealt with each one and stayed strong throughout it all. Its important for first year college students to know that at one point or another you will experience a tough time but you need to fight and over come it because if you give up you wont be getting anywhere. Sonia faced many other challenges but I feel as this one really demonstrates why we were assigned to read this book since it I such a valuable lesson.

All in all, reading My Beloved World you can see just how strong Sonia is and how incredible of a person she has become because of the challenges she faced as a kid. Its important to note that staying strong and pushing through difficult times can only lead to grater things. “If you wait, nothing will come” is the memoir I wrote after reading this book. Meaning, if you don’t come out of your comfort zone every once in a while you’re not gaining anything, therefore you wont get any farther. I feel it has to do with some of Sonia’s experiences too, if Sonia hadn’t taught herself how to deal with being a diabetic and waited for someone else to inject insulin into her everyday she wouldn’t have seen how brave she could have been.