My Neighborhood Has Shaped Me

I currently stay in a neighborhood that isn’t the prettiest or the nicest. I am surrounded all day with horrible people and horrible streets. I love this area for some strange reason. I don’t understand why I feel this way, since I strongly desire to move out the area. This neighborhood has shaped me in positive and negative ways. When I was in middle school I moved to East Oakland and attended Havenscourt middle school. When this experience first began I cried at the gates of my new school, because I was surrounded by seagulls picking up there lunch and spoiling my appetite for my own lunch. My school mates spoke a different version of English than that of what I did. I felt lost confused and wondered why everyone had such hatred for one another. Day after day I knew that I was going to have to make this situation work. As time went on I acquired friends and learned a different kind of English the kind my peers spoke. I’m naturally the type of person who enjoys the company of others, so I generally would be content on my own. Even though I enjoyed the school I attended, my neighborhood caused me a great deal of stress. When I would walk to school I would be mad that I didn’t bring a weapon along with me. Guys would literally jump out of their cars and try to throw me in there’s. I wasn’t used to this type of activity. One day I arrived to school early and I was given a chance to smoke which didn’t sound like too much of a bad idea since everyone else was doing it. I won’t tell whether I took my school mates up on that offer of or not. I didn’t learn much in class either the teacher wasn’t taking the class serious or the students weren’t which made for a bad learning environment. The things that were thought to me involved learning how to take care of myself, how to stand up for myself and how to adapt to different environments. I appreciate these tools that I can attribute to my former environment