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A time that I had a difficult experience was in school. The difficult experience was that in school I was having hard time with the work I was in math since I struggle in math I would be very upset when I received a bad grade on a test. Over the years I started getting a little better in math and being able to answer the math problems that was given to me. I over came this problem knowing that I will improve in time and be thrive. A connection between me Zebra is that at one point we thought that we would be able to do certain things but we soared.

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A time when things were difficult for me was actually in the middle of this school year. I guess I've always had a expectation for myself to be great no matter what. Ever since I was little to 7th grade things were usually so easy for me it almost felt like a handout... not to be cocky. But this was the first year i actually struggled a lot in certain areas in school and it drained my motivation to the max. I've always been the type to take my future really seriously at the end of the day and a lot of weight has been put on my back from my family about education cause all i wanted to do is accomplish what they always thought i was destined for. But this lack of motivation had me thinking about questions I've never though of before like whats my purpose ? and it was really a blank question to me with no answer.I had stopped putting in effort into certain things i used to , I stopped doing my homework and even though I put a smile on my face it was a heavy load on my back that no one seemed to notice . I overcame this though surprisingly because it was going on for so long because of something a friend had told me which i really don"t wanna share. But it was something I really needed to hear for a very long time and to be honest I was hoping my mom would be the one to tell me those words. It was like a boost of motivation

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A dark time in my life is when my dog ran away. I felt lonely and like i lost a best friend. I would wake every morning and not want to talk to anyone and I would always want to stay in my room. I over came this because after awhile my parents decided to get a cat. The connection between my life and Adams situation is the isolation and emotions.

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For my entire elementary i was called "gay" for talking to one of my best friends a lot. I don't know what their problem was but I guess they never had a real friendship. I however throughout the whole five years of my elementary had endured it and told no one. I don't really consider me overcoming this but it stop after i got to middle school. I eventually made new acquaintances and forgot about my bullies. A connection i can make with Zebra is that he had no one to share his pain with. For me having a friend although it was the reason i was being bullied however was the way i endured those five years of bullying. Maybe Zebra needed a friend to share his struggle with.

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Um..... I had a pet goldfish when I was 6 and their name was bubbles... I had that fish for 3 years before it randomly died.... I was pretty sad, I actually cried cause I loved that dang goldfish TwT... but I couldn’t do anything about it so I just flushed them down the toilet.... My mom was saying I was being extra with the crying but she will never understand. It was like the loss of a dog. I was given ice cream right after so I stop crying and moved on with life... it was just a fish.
And it might seem odd that this has to do anything related to how zebra feels but just think about it, he lost the ability to run and I lost my goldfish. His experience might be more depressing and life effecting but I couldn’t think of a time where I wasn’t happy.

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One time in my life I had experienced a difficult tie or endures a negative paradigm or experience was after I had gotten surgery on my knee.I couldn't play basketball for a couple of months.That couple of moths that I couldn't play basketball was the most depressing and unsatisfying couple of months of my life.I can relate that to the incident that of Zebra because before the time of the incident he was carefree and joyful,like how I was.Until the accident that would momentarily change his life like how it would change my life.After the accident Zebra was gloomy and depressed and couldn't do his favorite thing for a while-running.Even his own friends stop calling him Zebra and started calling him his name -Adam.When I was depressed I couldn't do anything,I felt lost...Like I was in a dark place.I can say me and Zebra was both in that same black and blue place when we where having surgery.This place is sooo dark and cold and breathtaking...literally.NO ONE CAN ESCAPE,once your in this hellhole,unless you have hope like I did.I hope Zebra can find that same hope.

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A difficult time in my life is when my aunt died of cancer. I would usually cry everyday for months, I didn’t want to sleep, I couldn’t, my mind was full of negativity. My grandma and mother would try to comfort me. I thought things would never get better, but I was wrong. Although there’s nothing that could bring her back, I know I’ll see her again, someday. Things changed, but as I learned wounds heal. It’s just a matter of time. A connect between my situation and Zebra’s was the emotion. The dark and gloomy feeling we both acquired.

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The time I experienced a difficult time in my life and it created a negative paradigm was when I met someone that had a huge impact on the way that I acted and thought. Eventually we parted ways after a while and it was basically doom and gloom for me. I didn't feel motivated to do anything or socialize with others. I overcame this obstacle by just simply living with it. My connection with Zebra is that I didn't really feel like doing anything until I endured it.

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A difficult time I had to face was when I had to switch schools. I switched from a private school to a public school and I didn’t know any teachers or students. I started off not knowing anybody or the curriculum they were being taught. I struggled a lot and I felt left out of a lot of things because of it. I was usually sad in school and didn’t want to try to learn because I felt I wouldn’t be able to. Eventually, I started meeting new people and making friends, and they helped me get through a lot of the problems I was facing. The difficulty i faced had a small connection to  Zebra because we both felt unmotivated to do certain things.

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A time when I experienced a difficult time in my life and it created a dark or negative paradigm for me was when in seventh grade when I was struggling in math class. This made me feel bad because I knew math is a very important class and you need to focus on it but now that I was in middle school it just got way harder than it was in elementary school. In elementary school I thought math wasn't that hard but now I was getting worse and worse at it. I started to feel bad because i I thought there was nothing I could do to improve in math. It made me feel worse to see how so many other people were understanding what we were learning and getting 90s while I was not learning anything no matter how hard anyone explained to me. Despite not understanding everything the math state test came by and I did my best to keep myself from failing. To my surprise I got an okay grade. A connection between my experience and Zebra's experience is that when Zebra was unwilling to try anything new after he got injured, I was also unwilling to try harder in math because I felt like no matter what I tried my grade would never get better.

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A difficult time that I went through is when my parents had a serious argument and almost split up because of it. This created a negative paradigm because I felt depressed and I felt down most of the time. This connects to zebra because zebra was always telling sad stories and I was always thinking of sad things in my head. Another connection that I had with zebra is that we both responded to people the same way when we said no. I overcame this by just thinking of other things and being in company of people who helped think of other things. This is one time that I experienced something difficult in my life and how it created a negative paradigm, also how I overcame this.

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A time I experienced a difficult time in my life is when i had 6 birds. Well i first started off with 2 birds but they ended up having babies and that how i ended up having 6 birds. They were the first ever pets i had so i love them the most. But my mom didn't feel the same way she wanted to get rid of them because they were annoying and  too much work to take care of them. My mom was planning on selling them and that was starting to make me sad. Than one day when I was feeding the birds i forgot to close the cage and two of the birds flew away, and for the other four we ended up selling it. Just like Zebra i was feeling sad and i didn't want to talk to anyone, and i wouldn't even hang out with people. Zebra and i both only had one thing in our mind, him his arm and me my favorite pets.

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A time i experienced a difficult time in my life was when i was failing at English Language Arts for the first time in the 6th grade. I didn't let my mom know about it of course so it was a lot of work not to show her my report card so i had to fix my grade and that took a lot of work because it was mainly homework i was missing. I was pretty sad considering this was my first failing grade and I didn't know if i could fix it since i didn't have too much time until the marking period ends. To overcome this I had to do more work through extra credit and making up my homework although i didn't have much time. This had led me to be more more stressed than usual although I was still happy.There are no connections between Zebras conflict and mine.

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A difficult time I experienced was when my cousin died from cancer. She was one of my favorite cousin and she would always talk to me and we would have fun. After she died I didn’t feel like doing anything and all i did was play on my phone. It hurt me especially because when she died she was in the hospital and we were at the salon , after the salon we planned on going to see her because we visited everyday. My mom started crying in the salon and people were comforting her and i did not know what was going on. Then my mom told me that my cousin died. I did not know how to react at that moment because I was just confused, but i cried. She had been fighting cancer since the day she came out the womb. Sometimes I felt like it shouldve  been me, not her.

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When I was 11 years old, in sixth grade, me and my family went to Sudan for the summer. Everything was going good until school started somewhere around August. As soon as school started, all my cousins started to hang out with me less and worry about school. I was fine with this because I knew that they had to focus on their education, but it was lonely. Even when there wasn't school, I couldn’t spend enough time with them that I enjoyed. It was like everybody disappeared. My close cousin was the one person that I mostly spent time with. She used to sleep with me at my house and everything. After school started, my cousins now started to sleep at my other cousins’ house. When I came over to visit, they bragged a little about how they slept together and that they were wearing the same clothes, which made them look like twins. Hearing them talk about that kind of hit me in the heart, I felt left out. After we finished eating, my two cousins left the room to go back in the house. As I slowly go up and started to follow them, one of my cousins’ mom said, “where do you think your going? Come and stay here, they are going to go and study. If you go with them you will distract them.” After this was said, my other aunt told me to go with them and not listen to my other aunt. Even though she said this, I already felt like I was stabbed in the heart, the damage has already been done by my other aunt’s words, so I walked out of the kitchen and catched up with my cousins. Instead of staying with them, I told them that I was going to go visit my grandma. The truth was, I didn't want to be there with them because of what my aunt said. My cousins persuaded my to stay but I insisted that I was going. I left the house and on the way to my grandmas’ house and I was trying not to cry. At the end of the day, I went home. I was quiet, so my  mom asked me what was wrong, I hesitated, but I told her. A while later, my other grandma, from my dad’s side, came to our house she saw me sad and also asked what happened, I told her too and she told me that I should listen to what my aunt said. She told me to not worry about it and that i'll be fine. I went to sleep that night and cried in my pillow just to get those emotions out of me. With thinking about what my grandma and mom told me, I didn’t let what my aunt said bother me, I pushed it aside and spent time with my cousins, even if it was just a little bit. I also started spending time with my aunts when I couldn’t spend time with my cousins. I can make the connection of feeling low-spirited just like Zebra, both our experiences left us depressed and wanting to be alone, at least for a short while.

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One difficult time in my life was when I got very sick it was a very bad time in my life because it interupted with my life and  I wasnt able to do the things that I was used to doing. This sickness made me feel week and unimportant. I couldn't  eat roght and or sleep because the pain was annoying me. This is connected to Zebra's pain beczuse we both were distracted by the pain we had. As the text states " Zebra stumbled about in vain for the answer". This shows that  Zebra's pain was distracting him from his daily functions this is connected to me because the pain I had was deep as well as distracting. The text also states " Adam, you at all interested in art?. No" Zebra's circumstances drove him to a path where he wants to be isolated and this is connected to me because I felt as if nobody could help me in the state that I was

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A time when I experienced a difficult time in my life and it created a darkness or negative paradigm was when I received the lowest grade for the ELA midterm in our whole class. When I heard the teacher say my grade it to me... I was shook. I didn’t know what to do, I felt like I would fail the actual state test. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone and I kept being sad. I just felt like I wasn’t doing good and that I just shouldn’t try at all. I just lost all hope in going to school and trying. I realized that I did my best for the midterm but it just wasn’t enough. So when I saw my grade I just wasn’t having it. I expected a higher grade than what I received. Days went by, my parents just told me to try harder and that I would do good, but getting the lowest grade in the class wasn’t fun. This connects to Zebra because we both felt sad for something that happened. I was sad because I tried so hard on the test and was sure that I would get s good grade but ended up with the worst. On the other hand. Zebra is sad because he got hurt while running. It’s something that we both was happy about, but we both ended up failing/getting hurt. I overcame this obstacle by trying even harder, I did my best during the state test and received a high 3. So I was proud and happy.

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One time something happened that I've never experienced before, and honestly I was pretty scared. I was playing around with my turtle Batoe. It might sound weird but it was happening. When I went to place back into his tank he suddenly threw up. At that moment I was scared because I thought I  had done something wrong. I will admit, if anyone saw me crying the way I was and then found out the reason why they will call me overdramatic. But at the time, I thought Batoe was dying and searching up possible reasoning's behind why he threw up did not help my situation. After panicking, my Mother took care of Batoe but after that I was scared to take him out his tank, thinking that something will happen again. I overcame this by reading different articles and researching more healthy food choices to feed Batoe such as greens and different vegetables such as carrots. I even went as far as convincing my mother and Step-father to buy a bigger tank for him and as well as my other turtle, Steph, In hopes that the same thing would not happen again. A connection that can be made between my situation and Zebra's is not something that the human mind can interpret. Zebra and I both felt a sudden emotion that affected us at one point of our life. Even though, Zebra's situation is more damaging emotionally and physically, emotions is something that can be connected.

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It was about three years ago when I was at my cousin’s house. It was a pretty fun time with all my cousins. They also had a pool in their backyard. There were two parts of the pool, a deep pool and a shallow one. Since I was little, I was with other girls my age (or younger) at the shallow side of the pool. Later, everyone left the pool except for me, my cousin, and a friend. I didn’t wear a floatie nor held anything to support myself since I was in the shallow part. My cousin wanted a floatie that was in between the separation of the shallow and deep sides. I thought that if I jumped and grabbed the floatie, then I would be able to float. I wasn’t thinking straight at that time and thought it would be a good idea. So, I jumped and grabbed the floatie, but it didn’t stay with my hand. I was trying really hard to float, I was using my hands to push myself so I could still breathe. Back then, I didn’t know that panicking could affect your chance of survival. I saw my mom telling my uncle to help me. My uncle jumped over his mini fence and dived into the water. When he held onto me, I wasn’t being so smart, so I held really tightly and tried to push myself up. I now know that it must’ve been hard for him to push me out of the water,  since I was putting my weight on him underwater. When we got out of the pool, he was lying on the ground, looking really exhausted. I didn’t  know that I was able to hurt an adult like that. He said that he was fine after a while, but I knew his shoulders were still in pain. I really didn’t know how to thank him other than just simply whimpering “thank you”. I really couldn’t sleep that night. All I heard was water splashing, as if I was just drowning again - which I was - not in water, but in guilt and fear. I didn’t want to go to my cousin’s house again or go near a pool in the summer. The most I’d go is when I’m at a beach and the waves would splash at nothing higher than my knees. I never thought about taking swimming classes and I don’t think I will. I heard some nasty ways that coaches would teach their swimmers. I overcame this pretty soon, the thought of drowning just left me and I know that I won’t go to the deep end of the pool soon. There was a connection with Zebra, we both had a negative and lifeless paradigm. However, we were also different because my negativeness was only towards pools and huge bodies of water, while Zebra’s was towards almost everything.

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So when we were applying for high school application. I signed up for Midwood and I really wanted to get into the Medical Science program which I failed to do. I felt like that might not happen because science was the lowest grade I had. Once we got our results back I noticed I didn't accepted to Med Sci. I really wanted to get into his program because it was one of the highest and challenging programs. My sister than told me when I get into high school and I do good I could transfer into the program. This is connected to Zebra because I felt like I couldn't do anything and that if I didn't make it the first tie how will I make it the second time.

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A dark time in my life was when I saw my parents arguing in my face then divorced. The problem made me start slacking at school my grades were just dropping and I didn't care.I let myself roam around in the hallway, sleeping in class and doing whatever I want; my teacher always told me that I should put more effort I didn't listen but I had hell to pay for it. My teacher after some time decide to finally check homework  and of course I didn't do it, she asked me why I said because it's not important, she called my house that was the start of senseless beating day after day till I did my homework, and I did. My teachers told me I was going to end up as a failure that lit a light in me I started focusing in class read more did my homework and I ended up passing the grade. I have a similarity with Zebra because when my life hit a wall I just stopped doing anything, till something lit a flame in me.

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I had a negative paradigm when I lost my grandma to cancer. The few weeks after it happened in school my attitude changed I didn’t talk much and I was a gloomy person. I was able to overcome this by forgetting about it by having fun going to places and talking to friends and family. For example I went to amusement parks and festivals which were fun talked to my brothers I played games I liked watched games I liked and it helped me get over my loss. It does not have a connection to Zebra’s conflict that mad him feel a bad way other than losing something we love. For him it was losing an arm and for me it was losing a person.