Hello, My name is Joshua K. Lemon. I recently graduated from Central Academy of Technology of Arts located in Monroe, North Carolina. This is my first year at South Piedmont Community College, which is also located in Monroe, North Carolina. I was born June 4th, 1996 and I am from Monroe, North Carolina. While attending SPCC, I plan on graduating with my Associates in Science. From there I plan to move on to a four-year university and pursue Physical Therapy. I have not decided on what school I plan on attending, but I am sure I will make my decision very soon. I love helping others, and I think that is why I got into physical therapy, I love what they are able to do for people, and what they were able to do for me.

 

A few years ago I suffered a sports related injury, and I was in physical therapy for almost a year and a half, and I might have to give up the sport that I loved, which was wrestling. The doctors told me that it would take a long time for my leg to heal properly. And that is when I began my journey in physical therapy. During that time, I observed what they were able to do, not only for myself but for other people as well. I gained a great amount of respect for physical therapists and knew that this was the career that I wanted to pursue. But being involved with wrestling also helped me find a passion for something else. When being a wrestler, you have to make sure that you diet properly as well as train properly, or you would see poor results, and a big part of wrestling was being able to lose weight so you can wrestle in your desired weight class, and this is where I found the passion for nutrition. I have always wanted to work with nutrition, I feel that nutrition is very important, and I would love to help others with it. Especially children, I would love to help children who are dealing with weight issues, in hopes that they would have a much healthier life. And once I become a physical therapist, I would love to work in nutrition as well. I also love working out, I go to the gym 5 days a week. I love staying in shape and being healthy. I would also love to work with something relating to fitness as well.

 

I find myself to be a visual learner. I need to watch how something is done in order to understand it. I feel like I have always been this way. I find myself being really observant when it comes to things that I am passionate about, and I feel like I learn better that way. I have a lot of goals in my life. And I hope to accomplish them all. But I know that in order to do so I need to make the right decisions. I am the type of person who likes to set a goal and then go out and accomplish it and then set another goal. That way I always have a drive to accomplish something. Because I don't want to look back on my life and have any regrets, I don't want to say, "I wish I would have...". I used to be like that, but as I grew as a person, I decided that I didn’t want to be like that anymore, so I started setting goals for myself and work on accomplishing them. Looking back, it is one of the best decisions that I have ever made for myself.

 

I always try to find new hobbies that interest me, and I love challenging myself. I have had a passion for nutrition for years now, but I have never truly challenged myself in order to learn something new, so I decided to do just that. One day I decided that I would become a vegetarian because it would impose a new challenge for myself. The transition was easy in regards to not eating meat products. But I had no idea what to eat. So I literally did hours of research in order to find out what I could eat in regards to my nutritional needs, by nutritional needs I mean my macros, which are carbs, fats, and proteins. I only eat so much of each macronutrient a day, and I found it very difficult to eat a low-carbohydrate diet while being a vegetarian, so this definitely was a tough challenge. So after hours of research, I finally developed a sufficient meal plan to would meet my nutritional needs. This experience shares with you a lot about who I am as a person, I always enjoy challenging myself, whatever it may be. I always love a nice challenge. I think I got this from my mother. As a kid, I would see my mother work very hard to be able to provide for my and my siblings. I never saw her give up when times were tough, and I am so glad to have a mother like her. Even though we didn't have much money, my mom made sure that I and my siblings had everything we needed, food, clothes, shelter, etc. My mother is my biggest inspiration, and she is the reason that I want to be successful.

 

Referring back to the quote that you saw on my welcome page, "Some days you eat the bear...and some days the bear eats you." - Unknown. This is a quote that I like to live my life by. Basically it means that sometimes life gets you down, but it is how you overcome your adversities that define you as a person. And that is what I try to do, I do not let my adversities define me, I simply overcome them, and let that define who I am. During my life, I have had a lot of ups and downs. It is very important to keep moving forward, to keep overcoming the hardships that you may be facing. And to not let life defeat you.