Growing up on the north side of Chicago, attending various Chicago public schools, I experienced how it is to have 40 kids per class, over packed busing, and lets not forget the prison food...I mean free lunch. As a child, my parents moved quite often, so my childhood education was all over the place. Although at the time, I would be extremely mad at my parents for making me leave all my friends, over time, I came to appreciate what they had done for me. Without knowing it, my parents allowed me to obtain aspects from different cultures and teachings from each school I attended. As I moved around, all of the schools that I attended had one thing in common, low budget education. When I graduated middle school, an opportunity of a life time was handed to me. I was given the chance to attend Nazareth Academy, a suburban catholic school that costs almost as much as a semester in college. I was given this opportunity with the help of an academic scholarship and my parents, who wanted nothing but the best for me. All I could think about was the next four years of my life as a Road Runner, I was more excited than a little kid in a candy shop. That was until my actual first day of high school..
My first day of high school consisted of me feeling isolated from the new world around me. Nazareth Academy is one of the most prestigious high schools in Illinois. What type of kids attend the most prestigious high school in Illinois you may ask? Well lets just say, I could count the number of Latino students in the entire school with both of my hands. Not only was this a culture shock for me, but to top it all off, EVERYONE, including the handful of Latino students, had parents who were doctors, lawyers, famous actors, and even scientists. Money surrounded me. Wealthy students everywhere, and then there was my family and I, a rather a blue collar family, barely making enough money to reach ends meet. I did not belong. I tried adjusting to the world around me but I just couldn't. I had nothing in common with any of the students. Their hobbies were jet skiing and partying on their brand new yacht, while my hobbies consisted of swimming in the inflatable pool in my back yard. You get the point. I felt out of place and distant from a social life which really affected my education. I didn't make many friends, so I wasn't able to reach a comfortable learning environment. On top of this, I'm attending a school in which my parents are struggling day in and day out to pay for, a school in which I no longer wanted to attend. I eventually convinced my parents to allow me to transfer to a near by public high school in the new community we moved to. Not before setting a requirement of me maintaining a 3.5 GPA or higher and participating in two or more clubs/sports. My parents set this requirement because the high school that I was going to attend was the exact opposite of Nazareth. I believe almost 85% of my new high school consisted of minority students compared to the handful at Naz. Race is not what made me want to switch schools, it was the difference in social class. I felt uncomfortable in a place where I was not able to see more people that were like me. This experience has taught me the large difference in social structure and general ideas different communities hold. At Nazareth, the norm was owning a boat, having a beach house in Hawaii and getting a brand new Porsche on your sixteenth birthday. In the community surrounding the school, that may also be the norm, but how I was raised, and the whereabouts in which I was raised in, these norms were merely dreams. Having experienced this, I describe it as an "out of body experience", I understand how it is to feel different. I now understand that different is a good thing, because how else is society going to break these norms of having only a handful of minority students in one of the best high schools in Illinois? I do not regret transferring, for it was one of the best decisions of my life, but I do regret not giving my full potential and narrowing my education to the people in which I see around me. This piece of my life has shaped me into the person I am today, and I am forever grateful for having experienced it and now realizing what it truly is to be "different."
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/08/13/the-difference-between-wealth-and-class/http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/04/03/class-differences-in-spending-on-children/
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