Changing Pieces

After being dropped off by my mother, I walked through the glass doors of the newly built building. Slowly worked

my way through the cream colored hallways, I found the room I was destined for. Upon finding the room, I opened the door and was greeted by what soon became my sixth grade homeroom teacher. It was the first day of school for me after moving to Nazareth, Pennsylvania in January. It was quite a difference from my previous school in Lake Jackson, Texas, yet these differences were the least of my concerns. I was the new kid in this school,

I had to adjust to a new lifestyle and meet new friends, something that scared me thinking about it. I thought that I would never meet people and that I would be miserable, I

just couldn’t understand why we had to move. As I look back on this move from my larger town in Texas to my new home in the medium sized town of Nazareth, I see that this simple event represents a trait that has changed since moving. I have found that this one piece of who I am to also be troublesome at times. When first meeting people I tend to be shy, would rather be quiet and allow others to introduce themselves than walk up to random strangers and try to become friends with them, I can somewhat be considered as an introvert. Yet after my move from Texas to Pennsylvania I have found that I have slowly moved away from that shy kid image to one that is more outgoing and open.

While I had established friends in Texas, I knew nobody in Pennsylvania and I knew I would have to start from scratch, which meant finding new friends and meeting new people. I had moved before, once when I was a baby and again when I was seven, yet because of my younger age I think I found it easier to meet people. Now that I was leaving all of the friends that had known behind, I knew I would have to create new friendships. After arriving in Pennsylvania, it wasn’t until two days later that we actually moved into our house and I began going to school. The first day of school I began to meet people from my classes and had other students show me around, but it wasn’t until a couple of days after I started school that I surprised myself. This surprise was actually the beginning of the change in how I present myself to the world. I began to become more outgoing; I was the one who went to greet new people.

I found myself being completely opposite of what I felt myself to be. As the years went on and I found a group of people that I could clearly call my friends, I was amazed at how much more outgoing I had become from this single event in my life. I still have the tendency to be shy and quiet, but yet I am able to consciously overcome that tendency.

While I can look back and see all the change I have made in that aspect of myself, and how much easier it has been for me to meet people up here at Penn State because of this, I still have found that I have that tendency to revert back to my old self. It is still weird for me to think of myself just going around and meeting anyone I see and saying hello, but each day I try to become more outgoing and less reserved. This will always be the way I am though, because while I have changed one way I present myself, I will still always be somewhat reserved. While I may be able to change parts of myself, I cannot fully change one of the pieces that make up who I am; instead I can only modify that piece so much and have it fit back into the puzzle nicely. If I were to drastically change one piece of that puzzle, I would then have to change other pieces so that newly modified piece would fit back in, completely changing who I am. Now that I slowly have begun to change and add more pieces to the puzzle that makes up who I am, I want to learn how I can express that in words. I feel that words are one of the most influential things in life and to be able to express myself through words would possibly help me to become more extroverted and more outgoing.