I was soooo set on hating EOP. I came in expecting nothing more than to just get through the 4 week program. In and out. But now it’s the last day and I realize how sad I am to leave. Coming to UB was very scary for me. I realize now that growing up in Lacaster cut me off from the rest of the world. We hide behind nice houses with col de sacs and name-brand clothes that make us feel like we’re higher up than everyone else. We are a majority- white high school. I have never known anything more than this. So when I came into this program and I was a minority for the first time in my life, I was terrified.
Quickly, though, these people changed my life. I met a girl who told me that when she was fifteen she was paying her family’s phone and electricity bills herself without even a thank you from her mother. When I asked one boy about the buildings in NYC, he told me that they don’t look as beautiful when you’re standing on top of one contemplating if you should jump. Another boy told me stories about how the older kids used to pay him a few dollars a day if he won in fights with other boys.
When these people told me about the lives they lived everyday, I couldn’t speak after. How could I possibly tell them that the hardest thing I’ve gone through was kids being mean to me in middle school? When they asked me how I got around the town, how could I look them in the eye and reply, “with the car my parents bought for me when I turned 16.”
