2011+Adult+Level+Student+Essay+Contest

=**Congratulations to Susana Garibay, Level 7 ESL student at San Diego Community College Continuing Education's West City Campus, whose instructor is Magdalena Kwiatkowski. Susana wins the $500 prize, sponsored by McGraw Hill. Below is her winning essay, "Facing the Unexpected." Video. **= =Facing the Unexpected = When people get married, they think life is always going to be perfect, but the bliss does not last long. The first change is when they become parents. They work more and more, losing themselves in their busy schedules, and it never crosses their minds that something bad, like an illness or an accident, may happen to them. I was just like that. I was nineteen when I got pregnant. I did not really want a baby at the time because my husband and I were too young. We moved from Mexico to San Diego, which was already a big change in our lives, and a pregnancy was too much to handle. When my daughter was born, I realized I had absolutely no experience with babies. Still, I tried my best. Most of the time, I was home alone with her because my husband worked twelve hours a day and when he got home, he was so tired that I did not want to bother him with my concerns. When my daughter was four years old, one week after her birthday, she became sick. I thought she had a cold. We went to the doctor, who looked at her and said, "It is nothing serious. She is going to be okay in a few days." But something was definitely wrong because she did not want to eat or play. We took her to the emergency room. As soon as the nurse asked me the first question I knew I should not have dropped out of the ESL class. We had to ask for a translator, which was very embarrassing. The doctors took her into the exam room and finally figured out why she had been feeling sick for the past five days. She had bacterial pneumonia, an illness that causes inflammation and produces pus in the lungs. We brought her in just in time. Soon it would be too late. She stayed in the hospital for seven days. She had fever and was breathing rapidly and shaking. She looked so fragile lying on the hospital bed! My husband and I were scared because we loved her so much. The next day after we got home from the hospital, I changed her pediatrician, but, because I had to work, it took me ten years to enroll in an ESL class. This time I am not going to give up. These were horrible days, but they taught me a valuable lesson: life can change in a blink of an eye, and we need to work a little less, enjoy our family more, and get educated as much as we can to protect ourselves against life's cruel unpredictability.

__**PLEASE NOTE:**__ I have been notified by the CATESOL contests coordinator John Liang that the winning entrant will be asked to read his/her essay at the annual CATESOL Confernce in Long Beach on **__Saturday, April 9__** during the Adult Level Rap (12 p.m. - 1 p.m.) rather than during the Friday President's Luncheon, as in years past. Thank you!

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