Your determination is admirable, Joshua. It is truly a pleasure working with you.
And now it's my turn:
I grew up in Fresno, a poor town in northern California, with my siblings and mother. My auntie, God rest her soul, knew that Fresberg was a horrible place to live, and that no one really ever makes it out of there. When the opportunity arrived, she moved me and my siblings down to Southern California to get a better education and good jobs with hopes of moving our mother as well, once we could afford it. We packed some of our things and moved to Orange County, the land of opportunity.
Being young and extremely stubborn(I was going into my junior year of High School at the time) I did not want to move, and (of course) I thought I knew everything, so for my first few years in Orange County I was antisocial. Despite my best attempts to make things difficult, my auntie never lost faith in her favorite nephew. She would always tell me that we could do whatever we wanted with our futures and that she was proud of us. Another favor she did for us was never accepting anything but our best efforts; the word "slacker" was not in her vocabulary, especially not where we were concerned. None of it made sense at the time, but in the end it all paid off.
Senior year came around, and I guess you could say I grew up. With the realization that high school was at an end and whether I liked it or not, I no longer lived in Fresno, I opened my eyes to the opportunities available. I understood that if I tried hard enough I could attain one of my childhood dreams: working in the gaming industry.
I got buy pulling shifts at a number of restaurants and went to school for awhile. During that time I would search the internet to find a place that was hiring for testers. I knew that being a tester was my ticket in, seeing as I had no formal training to enter the world of games. I didn