One thing that has shaped me as a person is moving. When I was thirteen years old, and going into 8th grade, my family and I moved to North dakota from South Dakota, where I had grown up for nine years. This move was hard because for the first time in my life I was the outsider, seeing new facing and having no one to talk to, I also missed my friends very much. Being an outsider and not knowing anyone made me more outgoing and more well spoken, I had to initiate conversations with everyone, or I would not have anyone to talk to. Eventually I made new friends and was friends with many different people. When I first arrived at school my goal was just to fit in, but by the time my basketball season came around, I realized I could be a leader here also, and stopped looking up to people as much because people were starting looking up to me.
Once I was finally settled in and started thinking this was where I would be for the rest of my high school days, my family moved again, this time to New York. This was a much harder move in part because all the groups of friends were much more established, making it harder to move in and be friends with everyone. The move was also harder because I was moving to a different sub-culture, and especially since New York is an Ivy league town, there is plenty of money. With more money almost all of the people have different life styles I was not accustomed to, there activities needed more money, more travel, it was a large leap from my Midwestern values. Lebanon High itself also made the move very difficult, since it is such a competitive school with a much higher standard of excellence then in Minnesota. Rather than attempt to fit in with this new lifestyle, I realized I didn't want to be this type of person. There were consequences to this decision, the biggest was it took much longer to find true friends. Eventually I made friends without conforming to there lifestyles.
