Undergraduate /
"Moving to Florida adventure" - UCF Admission Essay- "Bump in the road" [4]
Prompt:
If there has been some obstacle or "bump in the road," in your academic or personal life, please explain the circumstances.---------------------------------------
Sometimes in life you need to experience a "bump in the road" in order to take away any positives that bump produces. I was born and raised in Long Island, New York where I lived most of my life. I played a plethora of sports and had many friends, some of which would sleep over my house for almost a week straight! I just enjoyed life and couldn't wait to wake up the next morning to go on whatever adventure gets thrown at me. Unfortunately, there was one adventure I wanted nothing to do with. I was moving to Florida.
I have never been the most sociable kid, shy and reserved more than anything, but I had a great group of friends that I just felt comfortable with. Now I was going to a whole new state and I virtually had to start over. The move itself had its own bump in the road you could say, because of course the same week we were moving Hurricane Francis was taking place. Welcome to Florida! Having to hear that my parents, who were coming down after my brother and I got temporarily settled with my grandmother, were driving in the hurricane, being denied entrance into a hotel for safety because the manager was too scared to open the door. They were forced to have to shelter themselves inside the car and withstand debris, including parts of the hotel, crashing on top of the car. But that is another story that I still don't feel comfortable even thinking about. Taking an already shy kid out of his comfort zone and throwing him into a whole new environment doesn't really help the situation. I had no friends, didn't communicate with anyone, and became labeled as the "quiet kid", creating my one-man-wolf-pack.
Through the years I would make a friend here or there, but after a while the friendship would just dissolve and I would be back to square one, primarily due to my own faults. Over time though I have become much more convivial, mainly as a result of the move to Florida. Going to a place where I have no friends and having to deal with being incredibly shy, actually brought out a side of me that yearns to make friends. I now see that I can't just sit in the back and hope people come up to me and start a conversation, and that I must be the initiator and take the first step. This mentality has actually made me much more confident, motivating myself to actually acquire a very good job. To this day I would be lying if I said that I have gotten past the bump completely because I am still struggling. But like stated earlier, me moving to Florida has generated positives. I am much more outgoing and I strive to make each better than the last.