The Bronx home to the second greatest baseball team The Yankees, a melting pot of multiple ethnic groups, and the birthplace of modern hip hop! A significant portion of my life I’ve spent absorbing the plethora of experiences the Bronx has to offer, ranging from exciting games at Yankee stadium, and also living one block away from the esteemed Grandmaster Flash’s old project building. “Plethora Of Experiences” Neil you only named two things, what about “the melting pot of multiple ethnic groups”? We’ll get into that eventually, see I can’t talk about the people of the Bronx without talking about the public education of the Bronx. Out of my 17 years of my life, roughly 12-13 Years were spent in the public education system, and it was to put into simple terms “shitty”. While I will admit that the years leading up to the Obama administration were bearable, the minute Michelle Obama changed the standard for school lunch everything went downhill. The first problem being that the food changed from being actual food to “healthy” alternatives, which boiled down to pre-made microwaved food. The Bronx was notorious for its bad food in general and these changes made it worse; crappy school lunch was the least of my problems in elementary school. I was deemed a troubled kid young and encountered my fair share teachers who would’ve loved to not have me as a student. I ended up not spending a lot of time in elementary school and spending most of my 4th and 5th-grade year in therapy. This was counterproductive since I missed out on key moments that kids have during their elementary school years, recess, making friends, gym periods. My therapy sessions ceased since it started to take a noticeable toll on my family financially, and as I transitioned into middle school my life continued to deteriorate. I lacked the necessary social skills to make friends and developed an anxiety disorder ironically named SAD. Social Anxiety Disorder made it difficult to make friends since I was constantly afraid of being judged to the point that I would avoid human contact. I tried to emulate my older sister since she was smart, popular, outgoing, and had a lot of friends. My attempts yielded some results, I needed attention so I made a conscious choice to become a trouble maker. I didn’t like teachers anyway so stopping lessons and slowing down the classroom was a win-win for me. High School was the turning point for me since I stopped being awkward, and started to mature immensely. My outlook on education still hadn’t changed since teachers/faculty never did anything for me, when I struggled with depression, when I yearned for attention, no teacher came and gave me what I needed. A helping hand, all I wanted to hear was that someone cared, I’ll admit partially it’s my fault since I treated them like crap, but it’s kinda their job to help me out soooo that’s on them. My mental issues still burdened me in high school, but I had friends now which helped keep my mind distracted. I created meaningful relationships and enjoyed the merits of friendship, unfortunately, I still didn’t have anyone to relate to. The 12th-grade year is when I distanced myself from school, I essentially missed the whole year, due to lack of motivation for school and life itself. What was different about this chapter in my life is that my teachers cared for me. My first-period teacher would call me so I can come to school, even if I was late I was accepted with open arms. For once educators cared about me, after so many years of being neglected, the people I wanted to acknowledge me had done it. Even with their efforts not much changed in me, it wasn’t until halfway through the year that their dedication to my success was apparent. After receiving barely passing marks I was done with school, I tried to be interested but I was having trouble immersing myself into the mentality of a scholar. Mentally I was somewhere else and around this time is when I was contemplating suicide, the dean of my school was notified by my advisor after she overheard me talking about it.
