Some immigrant children have to grow up fast when they come to the United States.
Dorina Arapi, who moved to the United States from Albania as a child, writes how the two hours she cared for her younger brother each day while her mother worked seemed like 200 hours. Also, she says in a student essay featured by an Eduwonk post yesterday that she was looking up words in a dictionary and otherwise perfecting her English while other 8-year-olds rode their bikes and went to the park. “I felt I was an adult before I was a kid,” she writes.
Ms. Arapi wrote her essay while participating in a program called the College Summit. She was a participant in 2003 as a high school student. Her essay is one of ten student essays published in a collection, “In Their Words.” (Click on the cover image of “In Their Words” to the right of the page here.)
Her beautiful way of expressing herself shows she succeeded in learning the language of her new home.