What is the American dream? The American dream is the dream that we immigrants dream about in our country. We dream that if we come here to the United States life is going to be easy and better, that the hard working and suffering is going to end. As a young immigrant, I gave up my life in West Africa and came to the United States to seek a new beginning, not knowing that before anything is possible here in the United States, I have to master how to read and write.

The American dream is education and pursuing happiness. It means that I have to get up every morning to go school and to work hard in school. My mom and dad did not have the chance to finish school. They did not know very much. So now that I have the opportunity here in the United States to go to a better school, I am going to take that chance.

When I was a little girl, I had a big dream: that there is a place, a place that people don’t have to sit in the sun all day planting food to make a living, where you don’t have to sleep hungry because your mom or dad didn’t have money to buy food, a place where dreams are like floating clouds above the light blue sky, waiting to be accomplished.

Some immigrants don’t see that, all they see is partying and drug dealing. So I ask again: what really is the American dream? Is it partying until 5:00 AM in the morning? Selling drugs? Not caring about what you do in your life?

Take for example my friend Julius, who was trying to achieve the American dream, but did a lot of bad stuff in his life that messed him up. Now he thinks by selling drugs and throwing parties he will help get his life back on track, not knowing that it would get worse. Julius got arrested a month before his eighteenth birthday. He got caught with drugs and weapons in his car and was taken away.

Is this the way to achieve the American dream? Selling drugs and doing stuff that won’t benefit our lives? Or doing the things that we know that will make a difference in our lives?

The American dream is in your mind and heart. If you want to make your dream real, believe in yourself and it will be in your hand.