As the streak goes on of not being able to have a winning season, there has been one person in my life that has always kept me going. He’s tall, dark brown hair, and has dark brown eyes. I’m proud to call this person my brother Ivan. At age twenty-one he’s working full time at Lexus and part time at CLC (College Of Lake County). He manages to find time to spend with me to see how i’m doing. Life has never been easy for my brother. He has always have to fight for what he wants/needed. I’m amazed by how determined he is and how inspirational he is to me.

As a little kid, my brother was going through a lot. There was always a struggle for money, and my brother almost never saw our parents. My parents both work tremendously to support my brother and worked day and night. They were renting out an apartment in Vernon Hills which was very compact and very expensive at the time. My brother slept in a closet due to lack of space. He never got to play with the toys the other kids got at school or never got a pair of new clothes every month. He learn to live the life they were living. My brother would often go outside and look for any trash that was useful to them. My brother has told me that the nintendo that he found in the trashcan, “was probably the best thing i’ve gotten.” He learned that he had to be determined to do good in life even though things weren’t perfect. He almost never got to see our father unless he would stay up late at night waiting for him to come home from his second job.

As my brother got older, around highschool life got easier but never was easy. He hung out with the wrong crowd and made some bad decisions. He would ditch school and come home late.After he graduated high school, he decided to drop out of the College Of Lake County and to continue to the “party scene” he was living but still live at home. He would go out late at nights and not come back till 4 in the morning. There was always arguments at our house due to him doing this. After a rough year or two, he noticed that there was nothing coming out of what he was doing which was partying, going out, and drinking. It all hit a dead end. So At age 20, my brother found a job at Lexus. After that he re-joined college, and is now working on his business degree. He manages to maintain both things successfully. He says to me, “ When you get out of highschool, you're going straight to college.” I ask why? He replies to me saying, “ If I would of stayed in college, I would've had my degree by now, and I would have avoided a lot of problems.” He’s always been right by my side with anything I do and has always motivating me to do better. For him there's no such thing as bad grades or giving up. He’ll push me to my limits. I’ll get frustrated with him for him being on my case all the time, but all in all him being on my case makes me want to do better.

As my brother and me grew up, we became very close to eachother. We started off hating each other and fighting. We would always get into huge arguments and it would always end up bad. We would end up getting into fist fights. Growing up he showed me how to play certain video games to how to play some backyard football. I was always the smallest kid in our neighborhood and almost never played with my brother’s friends because they were always bigger than me. Once he would come inside he would ask me if I wanted to play Halo or Madden together since he knew that I wanted to play with someone. So him being tired and exhausted and still manage to play with me instead of sleeping was something i enjoyed of him. When I was little, I had anger issues and they were pretty bad. I would punch stuff and throw stuff too. He always helped me cope with my anger. He would either tell me to ignore it or just to let it go. Funny thing is that if I got mad at him for telling me that he would put me back into place. Thankfully with us both being older we’ve gotten extremely close to eachother. My brother can tell me anything and I can tell him anything. A perfect example of him being grateful to me is him bringing me Chipotle to school when I didn’t have lunch money and in return I bought him some Chipotle for bringing me Chipotle because Chipotle is life. He did a great act of kindness by just delivering Chipotle to me.

Him being my older brother has showed me a lot of characteristics that you can’t explain and ones that you can. He’s showed me anywhere from how to eat properly to how to market. He’s the best brother anyone can ask for and i’m proud to say that he’s my brother. He’s brought me up and now he is making sure I don’t come back down. Pushing me to my limits day by day like a coach, and making sure i'm doing good in school like a teacher he’s never let me down when I need him there. Him being apart of my life has impacted me tremendously with everything I did and everything i’m doing. I don’t go home everyday and spend hours on homework and studying just to get good grades. There’s a bigger part of me does it to prove to him that he did not waste his time trying to get me to do my homework back in middle school. Everything I accomplish in my life will be an accomplishment for not just me but for both of us. You might ask why? Right? If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have been doing what i’m doing. I would still be in middle school by the way my future looked backed than. Ivan, mom, dad, and me are beyond proud of you. Keep on doing what you doing and don’t stop. Like you’ve said to me, “The sky's the limit”. I thank you Ivan for everything you’ve done for me and everything you continue to do. You’ve had such an impact on my life and who knows where I would be without.  Thank you.