Breaking Night: Blog 3

Breaking Night Blog 3

This book has taught me a handful of things. One thing that this book has taught me is that education is very important if you want to go far in life. While I already knew this, this book has really highlighted why education is so important. In this book, Liz skips school a lot and ends up never going again. Until one day, after everything that has happened in her life, she decides to put her life back on track  by going back to school. She enrolls in Prep, a high school that takes learning and teaching to a new level. She pushes her self to finish a year of high school in a semester by getting to school early and staying late. She wants to graduate in two years. She succeeds and enrolls in Harvard.

This book also brought my attention to the fact that possible isn't truly known until you do it. Liz says, "But what I have also learned is that no, no one truly knows what is possible until they go and do it." This statement from Liz made me stop and think about how true that one thing is. To know possible is to do the possible. I have learned that instead of just saying it is possible and moving on, you have to try it, do it, and succeed for it to be possible. 

This book has taught me so many things and I am really happy that I chose to read this book for this project. 

Works Cited

Murray, Liz. Breaking Night. Century, 2011.

Breaking Night: Blog 2

Breaking Night Blog 2

Continuing with Breaking Night by Liz Murray, her parents have not been doing as many drugs as usual. The reason for that is that her mom has been having many breakdowns, and whenever her mom has a breakdown (a side effect of her schizophrenia*), she gets sent to North Central Bronx Hospital's psych ward. During this time, her mom can't do drugs and her dad stays sober to take care of Liz and her sister. I have learned that you should be grateful for whatever you have. She may not get fed everyday but she should still be grateful for the fact that her parents do truly care.

I have also learned that sometimes in order to get yourself and your family what is needed you have to do some weird and uncomfortable things. Liz has had to pretend to work at gas stations and ask people if they want her to pump their gas. Then, they tip her and she made pretty good money there. Although, there was a catch: workers would come and chase her off the property a few times a day. It was really sad, to me, when she, for the first time, had enough money on her own to buy a happy meal from McDonald's. When we think about today's world, a good percentage of people have enough money to get a happy meal from McDonald's. So, to just think about how happy and grateful she was to be able to have an actual meal from a fast-food place was kind of heartbreaking. Her harsh, unbelievable experiences have made me so much more grateful for the things I have even if it's not much.

*- schizophrenia: "a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation."

Works Cited
Murray, Liz. Breaking Night. Century, 2011.
Google Search, Google, www.google.com/search?q=schizophrenia%2Bdefinition&oq=schizophenia%2Bdef&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l5.5706j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.

Breaking Night: Blog 1

Breaking Night Blog 1

Breaking Night by Liz Murray is about what she, Liz, has had to grow up with and what she has done to get out of that environment. I have learned some of how Liz had to grow up. As a little kid, I don't think she understood that what her parents were doing was bad not to mention illegal. When Liz was born, her father was in prison for selling drugs. Liz's mother was put on probation instead of doing prison time because she was pregnant with Liz at the time. Liz has an older sister, Lisa. Since her father got released, Liz's mother has been doing drugs again. Her mother hadn't done drugs AT ALL during the period that Liz's father was in prison. They were doing good as a family. They had a clean house, enough money for food, her mother was healthy, and Liz and Lisa both got the attention that they needed (and wanted).

This information has taught me that we should all be lucky for what we have. Liz's parents do drugs, but she is lucky that she has a sister that is always sober unlike her parents. Lisa may be difficult and a problem child, but she is still there. Liz is also lucky that her mother was put on probation instead of going to prison. Otherwise, she would have been born in a prison and grown up with a different family until her parents got out. You just have to be grateful for what you do have instead of what you don't have.



Works Cited:
Murray, Liz. Breaking Night. Century, 2011.