Rattrovo 1

Justin Rattrovo

Debra Jizi

UWRT 1104-017

15 January 2017

Life Essay

An event that shaped my life as clich as it might sound was moving in the sixth grade

from New Jersey to North Carolina. At first I was livid about the idea of my life being uprooted

and basically having to start anew. I targeted most of my anger at the time towards my older

sister because the reason for the move was to give her better chances of obtaining a scholarship

for basketball, which never came to fruition. Eventually I became to accept the move and tried to

make the best of it that I could. Moving really became a positive experience because it opened a

lot of education opportunities along with allowing me to interact and experience a lot of

diversity.

Moving from one state to another was very much a culture shock but allowed me in a

way to become more tolerant to other people and understand how different environments affect

how much a person behaves. Most of my experiences from moving have been positive and I

cannot think of a truly negative experience that was solely attributed to the move. Another thing

that happened when moving from completely different states was having to develop better social

skills to find new friend groups that may have been friends long before I had come around which

was a struggle at first but made into a very personable character. A big difference that I had

experienced was the fact that the town that I came from was predominantly white and I moved to

a school with a lot more minorities like myself and probably fit in better there than back home.
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Another huge change was my old town was a tiny borough where I knew many people in my

class to a huge school and huge area that it encompasses. I had used to ride my bike around in

my home town to get from peoples houses but with my new living arrangement if my friends

were not in the same nationhood as me it was very difficult to get to their house.

The goal of the move originally was to create better academic opportunities when it came

to college for my older sister and it had also helped me as well. Without making my move I do

not believe I would be going to UNCC currently and even studying to become an engineer. I am

not sure if I would have found what I wanted to do without the help of my teacher in high school

which I would not have been thought by her if I had not moved down to North Carolina. The

move created who I am today because it gave me opportunities to meet diverse people and much

vaster opportunities when it came to my academic career.