The Life of Me (Joshua Kyle Jackson)

One of the greatest things about being alive today is I can be able to do the one thing my mother has never done: go to college. I am still learning the ropes of life as a 20-year-old guy in college, but I believe I will be alright at the end of the day. People always say "The Lord will make a way," and I am quite sure of that.

As for my biography, I was born in the late 1990s in Chicago's South Side on February 4. Due to me being born into extreme poverty and to a single mother, we've moved from place to place, from a house in which my mother and grandmother (mother's mother) were in to houses with women and children. There were some men, but I would not say they were great male figures. Now thinking about it, it wasn't really the greatest childhood after my grandmother's death in 2005. Moving from house to house was horrible. Yes, we had shelter, but there were many children that I had conflicts with. I have been told to stay away from them, but I could not because I tried to be nice to them, but from them, I learned that not everyone is your friend.

Despite the fact that I was in poverty and my mother did not have a job, I did fairly well at school. I had problems with teachers and students, but for some reason, I did not let that affect my grades (yes, it is rare). However, what hurt me is that I got held back in the third grade. I had a teacher that was belligerent, loud, and mean. During the second semester, she was gone for the whole semester. We had substitute after substitute, and what was worse was that we were right next door to the kids with special services (what the kids called them was L.D. (learning disability)). We were worse than the "L.D" class, the loudest of any class in the school. Surprisingly, I was able to move on to the next grade, but from them, something was going to change my life forever.

After the birth of my sister, Michaela, we moved to Champaign on April 12, 2010, and we have been there ever since.

I finished my elementary schooling at Kenwood Elementary, and started Edison Middle School. My goodness, I hated Edison, mostly because of me and the conflict with students. I was a complete, out of control idiot, and most people hated me for it. I had thoughts of suicide, but was too chicken to do because I knew what was going to happen after I did it. Sadly, I think about my belligerent ways every day at school. Once again, I did well in school, and I did not let my idiotic ways interfere with it.

I graduated from Edison and went to Champaign Central High School. My idiotic ways started to fade away, probably because I was in high school and the staff was better. Also, kids from other middle schools went to Central also, so it was easy for me to talk to diverse groups of people. Once academics came, I was way better in high school than in elementary and middle school.

During senior year, I filled out some applications for college, and I got into Parkland College (which is where am I now) and The College of St. Scholastica in Minnesota. I decided to go in to the Parkland Pathway Program, in which students accepted will take classes at Parkland for two or three years and transfer to the University of Illinois of Urbana-Champaign.

Now, I am in the Pathway Program, studying Computer Science and Math at Parkland. My goal is to be a computer scientist, and if not, I would do something in math, no sure what yet.

NOTE: This is just an overview of my life. I will break down the specific parts later on of my interests, my family life, my love for gospel music (specifically in the 1950's and 1960's), my involvement in Young Life, a Christian youth group, and others to list.

Welcome to my life!