I believe the America Dream is the ability to get a good education, to get a good job and live anywhere in this country. My mom believes that Dream is the opportunity to fulfill your potential and the freedom to try and do something productive and positive with your life to better yourself and your family. My mom also believes that no matter how hard one tries, the dream does not always come true.

I believe it is still possible to achieve the American Dream, but that it is more challenging then for my parent's generation. Due to the increase in population, getting into a good college is far more difficult. My mom thinks it's harder to achieve in this day and age because too many people are competing with each other and that collaboration has disappeared and it's become all about "me".

My American Dream involves getting a job that I love, something that makes me excited to go to work each day. I want a job to pays well enough so that I can afford to buy a house, send my kids to a good school and allows me the freedom to travel with my family, the way parents took me and my sister on trips from a young age.

For my mom, the American Dream is doing something that you are really passionate about and not compromising. For her, it's protecting the environment and educating others to take care of the planet. She also believes that the Dream involves creating balance in your life between work and family. My mom also believes that everyone in America should have access to a good education.

When she was younger, my mom didn't understand what the American Dream was. She was born and raised in Mexico and knew very little about America. After her parents got divorced, my grandmother made the decision to move with my mom to America. My mom resented this and felt she was being forced to go school in a foreign country. The kids spoke a different language and the culture was very different than the one she knew.

My grandmother who was originally from Eastern Europe had heard of the America Dream, believing that her daughter would have the best opportunity to get a high school education, so she could attend a top college, and then hopefully get a good job. My grandmother also had a dream of getting her PhD in music. When she moved to America she fulfilled that dream and went on to a career in teaching classical harpsichord and recorder.

As my mom got accustomed to the way of life in America she began to understand the American Dream. In her early years living in this country, she thought you were just part of a machine that had only one path; go to high school, then to college, then get a job until you got married and had kids. After leaving college and finding a passion for the environment my mom realized that you could have a job that created real change and affected people's lives, and that are many paths one can take to reach their individual American Dream.

There were several obstacles my mom faced when trying to get into the environmental field. First and foremost was that many people in positions of power didn't always care about the environment or improving the planet. Secondly, being a women, my mom was hired at a lower pay rate than men in similar positions, and when she had children and needed to take time off of work, it was viewed thatshe was not 100% committed to her career.

The American Dream has lost some of its purity. Today people believe that success is gauged solely on how much money you make or how big of a house you live in, not on how you reached the Dream. Today people will do anything at all costs to succeed, even if it means hurting others, society or the environment. Many people believe it ok to lie, cheat or steal, as long as at the end of the day "I" end up on top. In today's society, people are far less concerned with building something, then with just making money.

Both my mom and I believe that the real American Dream is accomplished by doing things in a way that when you benefit, society benefits too. There is nothing wrong with making a lot of money, but making money should be one of the by-products of success, not the only product of that success. When you really find the American Dream my mom says "It should float everybody's boat"