Obstacles Michael Oher Faced to Achieve his Dreams

In the novel, The Blind Side, a young boy named Michael Oher experiences many challenges that caused him to change throughout his life. He started off as a shy, uneducated boy and later grew into an inspiring role model who went through many obstacles to achieve his main goal of becoming a football player. The novel starts off by describing Michael as a homeless boy trying to survive his life, but the novel later progresses into him meeting new people and changing into a successful man who accomplished his goals. Michael had to overcome many obstacles in order to achieve his dreams. Obstacles he faced that helped lead to his success were homelessness, the ability to trust others, and his ambition to succeed.

Ever since Michael was a little kid, he had to learn how to fend for himself. He grew up with seven siblings and a mother who was constantly drunk; so he matured at a very young age in order to survive. “It was just that sometimes she seemed to forget that she had children and that we needed her care, so she’d go off for a while and we kids would be left to take care of ourselves and one another” (Oher 20). In this quote, Michael’s mother would occasionally forget to care for her children every time she was drunk and this led to her children fending for themselves and learning how to survive independently. There were many people in his neighbourhood that ended up in gangs because they didn’t have the money or education to find real jobs. Therefore, Michael was determined that he did not want to end up on the streets, and so this was the start of the obstacles Michael had to face in order to succeed in life. However, due to the lack of child care received from his mother, child services had to separate his family and Michael was left living with many different foster families throughout his life.

Since Michael grew up in a poor neighborhood, he believed the way his family lived was normal. Therefore, when child services came to take his family away, he was confused and frustrated, which led him to believe adults could not be trusted. At a very young age, Michael kept to himself most of the time and trusted only a few people. Since Michael experienced the separation of his family at a young age, he had little trust in others; especially adults. “I felt betrayed, and I had a hard time trusting people because it seemed like all of the adults, authority figures, just did what they thought was best without ever asking what I wanted or what felt right for me” (Oher 44). In this quote, Michael revealed that he did not trust many adults because of his experience in the past. He felt betrayed and felt it was unfair that child services kept him from seeing his mother and his other siblings.

This was another obstacle Michael had to face because without trusting in others, he couldn’t find the right group of people to believe in to help achieve his goals. Luckily, he met new friends throughout his life and also a new foster family; the Tuohys, who accepted him for he was and supported him and helped him pursue his dreams of becoming a professional football player. Despite the fact that Michael was homeless and suffered a lot to survive, it did not stop him from pursuing his dreams. Instead, it motivated him even more to work harder and to persevere, so he would not end up on the streets. “Even though it wasn’t the easier way, I decided that I wanted to be one of the kids who was actually working toward the goal, prepping myself for the kind of life I wanted” (Oher 92). In this quote, Michael was determined to study hard and to try his best to get the life he wanted, and not end up living his old life in a rundown area again.

Since he constantly changed foster families, he moved to many different schools and barely got to understand the subjects his teachers taught him. This caused him to have a disadvantage for schools to accept him, but Michael never gave up. His ambition to become a football player gave him the strength to keep trying and to work hard every day and to study for hours. He studied the football playbook to understand the rules of the game and the Tuohys even helped him improve his education by hiring a tutor to help Michael with his studies.

With the help of his friends and family, he was finally able to get accepted into the best university with a scholarship and pursue his dream as a football player. Michael Oher started off as a shy uneducated boy who had trouble trusting others, but as he got closer to achieving his goal, he met new friends and found a family who supported him along the way. Even though he grew up in a poor family, he did not let his past affect the way he wanted to live. Instead, he was motivated to do the best he can to achieve success, and in the end, he finally got what he wanted and inspired many
others who were just like him, to never give up on their dreams.