On Adam Shepard

I wrote this aside about Adam Shepard:

Adam Shepard spent 10 months in South Carolina starting out with 25$. His goal: to buy a car, rent an apartment and save 2500$ in a year.

As with most ESL classes, you run out of stuff to read very quickly. I’ve gotten into the habit of selecting an article every two weeks for my students. It doesn’t matter their level, beginner or advanced, I try to find something interesting regardless of it is leveled.

I’ve been using this article as my reading material for my ESL classes. It’s a great article and fun to read. My students are all adults. No teens or children, so this article is possibly not suited for those students. However the article is most compelling when read by adults, who realize what Adam Shepard had done.

This short essay was written by a student of mine. He’s in his mid forties and an intermediate ESL learner. From what he wrote, I can say that his written English is very good, compared to some of my other students. There were a few mistakes that I edited out or corrected, but otherwise it’s intact.

Courage or madman? How should we interpret this move? How can we qualify this youngster freshly out of school? No matter what we think about him and his experiment, we have to admit that it takes a lot of recklessness to contemplate such a challenge.

However we can conceive that despite this risky adventure, that all was planned and it’s probably the reason that made him succeed. With this success, he proved to everybody that if you are determined enough, you can get out of poverty by yourself. You only have to set realistic goals and adapt your life to them. He shows that the American Dream is not only a dream. At least everyone can expect to touch part of it.

Finally, Shepard’s experiment should be a source of motivation for everyone who aspires for a better life. It is for the ones that really want to get out of misery.