Title: Building Memories as a Teenager

Being a teenage immigrant and embarking in a strange land can certainly leave footprints in your life. As I have grown older...Now I can say after finding this written passage by me, I understand more the teenage life in the US and why so many smart adolescent may hesitate to give their all in school and activities. The adolescent mind can be so vulnerable and that stage of our lives is when we may end up falling down the drain...is sad when I see that now a days everyone is  a parent, perhaps wanting to fit in is not good after all, neither as a teenager or in adulthood.

                             Title: Building Memories as a Teenager

            At the age of 13 a drastic change occurred in my life. I came to the United States with my family from the Dominican Republic leaving behind friends, customs and my whole childhood. As I am writing, I am reflecting back to the moments when I first felt like a stranger in a strange land. I didn’t know the English language and starting high school in this new environment was more difficult for me then what I could ever imagine. I just remembered my first day in high school. It was pretty embarrassing for me; my father took me to school. Everybody all those strange faces looked at me like if I was some type of alien arriving at this school. I was not aware of what I was getting myself into. I guess back then I had a sense of what being speechless was really like.

            Luckily I found a friend in this new place, she helped me to adapt to the new way of taking classes and how bizarre I felt that I had to move from room to room instead of the teachers moving like it was in my former school in Dominican Republic. In addition, I was seeing the behavior of some students as idiotic and something that in my country will be consider some kind of retardation characteristic.  But my friend quickly informed me that it was just the way boys acted to call for attention and that the girls’ way of dressing was just a way of being attractive to them (I thought they dressed too scandalous for my taste). I remember a girl called Monica, she was my age perhaps some

Months older but she looked like she could’ve been my mother. She used to dress always showing her belly piercing as a sign of pride and she manage to go around the lunch room telling every table stories about her life in which I would seem the only one to not believe a word of her lies. Those were my first days in high school seeing how my classmates behaved which was typically normal in the most strange kind of way or just contemplating the attitudes of females’ my age like if they were grown woman with plenty of experiences about life issues.

            In my country I was very happy; I remember probably feeling some type of resentment against my parents. I turned to copy some of the rebellious attitudes I saw in school and turned it against my family, it took me a bad experience in order to realize how wrong I was acting and how my parents who worked almost 16 hours a day were sacrificing for me and for a better future, since in my country opportunities are scarce. I didn’t understand the so called “American Dream”. I just remembered coming home after school and not speaking a word to my parents, even when they asked me “How was your day?” I thought: “How dare they say? How was your day?!!, Is that all they can say after for me my whole life is ruined”. Now I realize how exaggerated a teenager can be. Therefore, I took some action and I thought that if I could play my silent game at school I was going to do the same at home. I’m still not clear about why I had desires of revenge against my parent, like if moving to this country was the worst thing they could had done to me. However, now is time for me to thank them about giving me the best chance of my life, the chance of getting a good education.

            My second year in high school was not so bad except when I encountered to the reality of my friend moving to Pennsylvania. At that particular time I was depressed thinking that I was going to be alone again in a place where I didn’t want to be. On the other hand, it was the opposite of what I thought, after having a woman to woman talk with my grandmother (a person who I admire very much), I began to adapt myself , to like the classes, and the environment at school which after all was part of my reality. Furthermore, I became involve in theater at the end of my sophomore year in high school and I was very impressed at myself because I started to improve my vocabulary and was able to write a complete whole sentence and attach them to a paragraph. As a result I was maturing, being more interested in the goals I created for me and taking any advantage of tutoring or any preparation that would help me to better my English so that I could balance myself with the individuals of my school.

            Dominican Republic who wished to have the chances I have of learning, having a family and a place to sleep, I started to be more aware and take values for what I had. Therefore, I became to take advantage of what I was taught in school and used it in many ways to help in my community, which I finally became accepting as part of my life.

The day I graduated from high school with honors and as the valedictorian I knew that my effort was worth it and that coming to the United States was not the end of the world instead it was the beginning of a new life for me in which I keep trying to encourage minority students like me to make the best of themselves and to work hard, after all that’s the way we can succeed in life as individuals who have beliefs and dreams. Remembering my days in my country just inspires me to maintain my values and customs wherever I go no matter how drastic the change might be. I will never forget my teenage years and different attitudes when I first started high school it is part of who I am today.