Growing up in the United States is honestly a tragedy. I say this because of the entire belief that we’re the greatest country in the world being a total and complete lie that hurts to hear when other people claim that. Is America all bad? No, definitely not. Is it even close to being the worst? No, but it needs work. A tremendous amount of work that I don’t think most Americans are willing to even put in. It is a melting pot of cultures and I think that gives us an advantage but it is a melting pot that doesn’t mix very well. I’ve never been one to sit and be where I am and be satisfied, I’ve pushed myself to learn outside of little Wichita Falls; to learn about other cultures, languages, societies, and just other ways of living in general. Culture everywhere is so vastly different than America. That is not to say that it’s better but to sit in the same culture and never look anywhere else is depriving oneself of humanity. Culture around the world can show so much history and art and creation and life. People are afraid of the other thing. The thing that they don’t understand or the thing that doesn’t match up with their morals and they forget to experience other people how they are. I want to travel the world and experience people how they are and discover how they came to be. I realized at a very young age that the color of my skin separated me from my schoolmates considering I went to a predominantly white school and lived in a predominantly white neighborhood. Feeling unwelcomed or prejudiced against is exactly what I would claim is what I went through at such a young age, but that might be because I wasn’t aware of what discrimination and prejudice were. But there were moments that I did realize there was a divide between races, so much so that for two weeks I pretended I was white. Seven-year-old me who had no real concept of white, black, Asian, Hispanic pretended that her skin wasn’t black, it was smooth and white like her friends. There was an idea that all white people were rich in my head so I told everyone about my butler and how I had so much money, I told people that my grandfather was Italian -- a lie that continued with me until I was twelve years old -- I claimed that I was just in the sun a lot which is why my skin is so dark. I became a pathological liar at a very young age essentially, I made the world fit in my head of what I wanted to be true. I wish someone had told me that I did not have to do that. I wish someone had told me that diversity is beautiful and should be celebrated. That’s why having other cultures and diversity is important and vital to me.