Monday, February 28, 2011

Standing Alone

By Mario A. Dozal

            First off, I would like to thank Alejandra and Patricia for visiting the class this past Monday. I will say on behalf of everyone thank you for telling us all about your personal experiences with PD, and with your ongoing thesis projects, which I’m sure that we all admire you for undertaking as they’re not easy tasks.
            The first article that I would like to contribute to the Popular Press section of the blog is an article from the Latino section of Fox News. After reading the article titled “Wrestler Grapples with Life After Both Parents Are Deported,” (http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/sports/2011/02/08/latino-wrestler-grapples-life-struggles) I began to think that this was a positive deviant at work. The article tells the story of a California high school wrestler named Arian Lucatero whose parents were deported five years ago yet he has motivated himself to be a positive deviant and succeed instead of becoming a negative one and falling into the traps that get so many others. Even with his parents being deported and him being forced to live in a car and not have a support system to remind him to do right instead of wrong and be there to cheer him on, Arian has managed to not become a negative statistic by joining a gang or becoming a teen father; instead he’s become a positive statistic by becoming a high school wrestler worthy of the California state championship and being driven to one day be able to bring his parents back to the United States permanently.
            I admire this kid a lot because I’ve never been faced with the situations that he’s faced. I’ve been lucky enough to always have a support system cheering me on and admonishing me when I needed it. I’ve also always been lucky enough to have a roof over my head. At the same time I ask myself: Would I just pick up and keep on keeping on if I were in the same situation? I can honestly say that I more than likely would not have had the same drive to just keep on going as this kid has, and to me that is what makes him a positive deviant. He knows the path that he needs to follow to achieve what he wants in life and he knows the obstacles he has to avoid, even when it’d be much easier to fall into those traps. This kid is a positive deviant if there ever was one.

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