Asher Sisneros

Edit: This essay has been sitting in my drafts for a week. I thought I published it, but I guess I didn’t.

One of the major turning points in my life happened shortly after I turned 14. It was daunting to realize that adulthood was just around the corner, and I was ill prepared. In a mere 5 years, my schooling would be over, and I would have to go into the real world and fight to survive. Up to that point, I had been lazy in my studies. Everything was about how I could avoid school, or simply deliver the bare-minimum. After all, what was the point in school? Sure, learning to read was important as well as basic arithmetic, but beyond that, my studies were redundant. Because of this mentality, I got behind. Very behind, and at no fault of the curriculum. Knowing of my failure was a gut-wrenching feeling and over time I disgusted myself.

However, that alone was not enough to convince me to make a change in my life. It took more. A year before, I started mowing lawns in the neighborhood to earn extra pocket money. Now, I had two customers. I was earning a hundred dollars a week, and life was good. However, there was a problem with this situation; the time it took for me to maintain my biggest customer’s lawn was consuming my entire day. Some days, I found myself working longer hours than my dad. Because of this, my studies lacked even more. Finally, one day, tragedy struck. My mower broke and I couldn’t maintain the lawn. I went two weeks waiting for it to get fixed at the shop. However, that was two weeks too long. When I went back to my customer, it was too late. She hired a new lawn crew.

That incident taught me two things: Business is hard, and I needed to learn how to repair mowers myself. Fortunately, that tragedy not only gave me the time to study more but also the enthusiasm to learn everything about business I could before graduation.

I know it seems cliché, but another large aspect of learning the most I could came when I started the Ron-Paul-Curriculum. I’m not just saying that. The business class, especially, has been phenomenal in talking about the benefits of building good habits early in your life, and teaching the fundamentals of business.

I also love how much it pushes me. Two essays a week. I started this curriculum in August, and since then I’ve seen massive improvements in my writing. We could argue that really, the biggest turning point in my life is when my parents decided to homeschool me, and I would agree. Both homeschooling and the RPC have been huge for me, and they go hand-in-hand.

Finally, three years ago my family started a read-the-bible-in-1yr program. The program is a schedule of passages to read throughout the week. At the end of the year, we’ve read the entire bible. It’s made a phenomenal difference in my memory of the bible stories and familiarity with where all the books of the bible are. Before starting such a schedule, reading the entire bible seemed like a daunting task, whereas now it seems trivial. This isn’t one of those habits that had immediate effect, but it’s something that proved to be fruitful over time.

All of these, from taking my school seriously, homeschooling and consistently reading the bible have been among the most crucial changes made in my life. I firmly believe that all of these things have played pivotal roles in developing me into who I am.