My family and I migrated to New York when I were only 13 years old. It was hard for me to settle down in a new place filled with new people. The weather was also something I needed to adapt to since it was nothing like home. Life as I knew it had changed. My parents made the decision to come here so that they could provide me with a better education and a brighter future. Since English isn’t my first language, I thought it would be hard for me to blend in with the class. That was the main reason I was placed in an ESL class because the school thought that I needed extra help with English. Jokes one them I was rather fluent with my English so they promoted me to an all-English-speaking class. As I was new to the school everyone had made their friend Groups already. I was always left out and pretty soon people started noticing that I didn’t have friends. The people that noticed me, to them I was the “weird loner”, they started bullying me for the littlest things. They would point out from my skin color to where I come from. The insults became so rooted in hatred that I was called a “monkey”. It was hard for me to push through those times since I was being cornered by all things in life, first a big change from where I live and go to school and now, I’m being bullied. I would go home and cry each day from the pressure I receive. I thought reporting this to a teacher or the principal would get them to stop but it only seemed to make things worse, the kids will get called into the office for punishment and the next day they’ll just take it up a notch. With all this going on focusing on my studies got quite difficult at times but I managed to pull through. 

When 8^th grade came around, I thought it’d be a different experience but it wasn’t as I was still around a similar group of people. The bullying never stopped but it toned down a bit. I took all this anger and frustration and put it all out with writing. That’s how my writing journey began. My English teacher would assign us to write poems and such. In those poems I would write how I felt and how it wasn’t fair to me or anyone to get bullied for something they can’t control. 

 I was still getting used to this American life and how they study so getting told to write poems from scratch without any examples being provided was quite hard for me. 

I still got made fun of because it was cowardly of me to write about all that I was going through instead of going and getting in a fight with my bullies. This is when my 8^th grade English teacher became my hero and the inspiration for writing. He stood up for me when my other classmates would try to bully me and he’d help me when he saw me struggling, he gave me ideas and motivated me to keep pushing forward. I started to like writing poems and some of them were published on the school display boards. With the work that I was doing in his class I became the best student in my English along with other classes. By the time graduation came around I managed to get an Honors Roll for my English class. That moment will stay in my memory forever because it proved something to me that no matter what hurdle comes our way if we choose to work hard it’ll always pay off in the end. 

My immigrant status has a social significance because due to where I’m from people can choose to interact with me differently. Just like when I can to America from my country the administrative system assumed that I have little to no knowledge of english which is why they chose to put me in an ESL class. Although Im not American it doesn’t give them the right to assume that I can’t speak English. I was a victim of bullying for having a different color skin tone than the rest of the students, this is a part of social significance because my skin tone isn’t something that I can change. Being bullied heavily on my skin color by someone who is white isn’t something I would make anyone especially immigrants experience.