An Ordinary Person Who's Extraordinary by Jennifer

An Ordinary Person Who's Extraordinary by Jennifer - April 2014 Scholarship Essay

I’ve always been one of those students that like to sit in the front of the classroom near the teacher’s desk and even in my advisory class my habit didn’t change. As my junior year progressed my advisory teacher, who was also my U.S History teacher, began a, what seemed to me, collection of books. Out of curiosity, one day I began to look at the books he had. I had no intention of actually wanting to read one and take it home with me, but that’s exactly what happened. In his collection of books he had the novel A Mighty Heart by Mariane Pearl and when I read the line under the title “the inside story of the Al Qaeda kidnapping of Daniel Pearl” I asked him if I could go to my desk and read it and he right away smiled and said “of course, you should read it you’re going to like it”. I knew that this story was going to be filled of details that many other books will not be able to reach, and I wasn’t wrong.

As soon as I opened the book and read the first page I was hooked, and I would flip when people disturbed me while I read the book. I was reading chapter after chapter in a span of a few hours.

Mariane Pearl, the author of the book as well as one of the main characters in the book, describes the tragedy she and her husband went through while they were in Pakistan, after the 9/11 catastrophe, following the trail of the Al Qaeda. Daniel Pearl was kidnapped while doing his job and Mariane was left alone pregnant, alone and in a foreign country.

Her way of facing this terrible event has throughout the year after reading it really impacted me. She went through a calamity that no one would want to go through; she lost her best friend, her husband and the father of her son, but she was tough and didn’t let her emotions take over while she was in Pakistan. She did everything she could to find her husband; she called ambassadors, went after people she knew would know something and kept a positive attitude and mentality.

Through Mariane Pearl I learned that being strong isn’t about having muscles, drinking protein shakes, and watching the food that you eat; it goes beyond that, it’s about having the ability to know you can and will break down but also knowing that you have to get back up on your feet and once again fight the world. This woman has proved to everyone that losing a loved one can be hard and can kill you in the inside but ruining yourself will not change what already happened. Not many people have the will to do what she did and for that reason she’s a woman who should be admired because recounting your tragedy and once again reliving what you went through by writing a novel and later having a movie be released is painful.

Now that I go through something that I consider terrible I remember her and know that what I’m going through isn’t half as bad and heartbreaking as losing a person you love in such a horrible way “with his hands in chains, but his heart undefeated”. Once I remember her I deal with what I have to deal with and don’t let myself fall in a pit thinking there is no way out because there is, and more importantly I also let myself know that life goes on.