Throughout my entire K-8 education I attended an extremely small Christian private school in Orlando, Florida. My entire world as I knew it was essentially limited to the same friends, classrooms, and concepts every day and every school year. That was until I transferred to a much larger non-religious preparatory high school, where I began knowing no one.

Yet it was here that I made my closest friends.

Friends that acted different than me. Friends that believed differently than me. Friends that looked different than me.

This switch to my new high school would be a key turning point in my life as it decided what would become my passion in life, my love for cultures and languages. Meeting so many new people from different backgrounds displayed for me how there existed a world outside of Christianity and America. To conquer my past of unawareness and closemindedness, I strived to learn as much as I could about the cultures and languages of the world, not only to make myself a school phenomenon amongst the minority populations, but to show them there were people like me outside of their culture that truly cared and respected what they believed.

After I discovered this passion, I decided that my future and my ideals laid best in the hands of International Affairs. After earning a 4.6 GPA while balancing high school soccer and basketball, I was able to gain acceptance to the University of Georgia, where I currently attend.

By attending an out of state university, I was able to repeat my cycle of exploring the new, as I came in knowing no one. Yet again my social perimeters were completely widened as I adjusted to a different state's cultures, behaviors, laws, and even slangs. Attending new schools as I grew taught me that there's always room for social and mental growth, even if it isn't clear until the next stage in life.