New School Year In India example essay topic

College Essay Draft Almost at the end of my sophomore year, we moved to Chicago, Illinois. This wasn't my first move by far. My family and I have moved almost every year since fourth grade. We have lived in London, India and we are currently residing in Chicago. In the middle of fourth grade we decided to move to London, United Kingdom as my dad was deputed by Government of India for a research project. I did not take kindly to the fact that I would be leaving Delhi, the only place I had known as home.

Much to my chagrin, we moved, and so the journey began for a frightened kid leading to the unknown. We stayed a year or so in London and it wasn't as bad as I had expected. Acculturation was easy but perhaps that was due to the innocence of a small child. The world was just black and white to me. Making friends and adjusting to a new place is a breeze when you are a kid but relatively much harder as you get older. Four years of my childhood, since fourth grade was spent in London, although we had returned briefly to Gujarat in India for a year.

That again was a new experience altogether. I had grown up in Delhi and didn't know there was so much of a cultural difference between two places in the same country. Adjusting in Gujarat was not so easy as I had grown a little older and perhaps by then with few rigid views of life but it didn't take too long. Learning a new language, apart from its own worth, it also helped me make friends. After a year or so when I finally felt at home we moved back to London. After a month into my eighth grade, news came that my Dad's deputation was over and we were moving back to New Delhi.

Even though for the past several years I had missed the place where I had spent my early formative years but now things were different. Ironically, I was the last to board the place again. I was apprehensive, everything had changes since I was last there. I went back to my old school, the school I had spent my kindergarten years in. In my class, I was fortunate to meet the students I had spent kindergarten through 3rd grade years. It didn't take me very long to adjust I realized things weren't as different as I had imagined.

Building up on old relationships, making new ones, it was all working out perfectly. It wasn't all smooth sailing though, again I had to learn a new language Sanskrit and brush up on Hindi, a language I hadn't used for almost four years, and I had only four months to do all this in. A new school year in India starts in April and it was November when we moved back and the finals were in the last month of February. I had no choice in the matter, this was something that I had to do and with a lot of help from family and friends, I got through it. Ninth grade was much better, I had many close friends and I was finally home.

This didn't last for too long though. In the last months of my ninth grade, my family decided to immigrate to U.S.A. Obviously I was totally against the move. I thought I wasn't scared of moving anymore but I was wrong. I was terrified! It was different now; this was high school not middle school or elementary school. The world wasn't all black and white anymore, it was scary.

I was scared of leaving behind my friends and moving to a completely new place again. Most of all I didn't want to move by now I was just plane tired of moving. Nevertheless, the middle of February approached, I said farewell to my world and we boarded the plane to go all the way across the world to Columbus, Ohio. In the beginning I was brooding, I didn't want to be in Ohio I wanted to be back home, with my friends and family. At the time, I viewed my experience as being shipwrecked on an unknown island: far away from home, wary and unwilling to adapt to my surroundings. For the first few months, I hid myself in the library during lunch, sat at the back in class and did my best to make myself invisible.

I was so busy concentrating on how much I hated where I lived that I didn't realize what I was missing out on. During the summer before my sophomore year, I realized I had to break out of my shell and make the best of what I had. So I entered school in September with a better outlook, it was tough breaking my first impression on people but gradually I was accepted into the system. At the end of my sophomore year, my dad got a better job offer in Chicago, Illinois. I thought about the time when all I had wanted to do was move out of Columbus but looking back I realized how far I had come from that. In the few years of my life I had traveled more than most people I knew and I had survived all experiences.

The year in Ohio opened my eyes to the reality that the world was bigger then what I merely knew, and somehow I must learn to adapt and adjust to my ever-changing surroundings. I would be lying if I said I was not worried about moving to Chicago but I knew in the end everything would work out, as always. The only difference this was, I wasn't as afraid of the uncharted waters that lay ahead.