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Ivan Mendoza

Ms. Tanzer

Crew

29 April 2019

My Final Word

2015 was the year I started my highschool years. I did not believe that I would be attending a

school 45 minutes out of my own city. The Greene School was not a school I chose to go to or

even had a say into picking and choosing where to go like most of students that are here in this

school. But there is one thing I did not do, and it was leave. I did not have anywhere else to go

because I have been in the public school district ever since kindergarten. I did not know what I

was getting myself into. A city kid going to a school way out of his own city, where they do

things you normally would never do like camping, hiking, or even take breaks out in the woods.

Regardless of all those, what I considered “strangle” at first, turned my life upside down, but in a

good way. I have gotten to experience different things just like camping and hiking. I also have

done fieldwork out in cities that I honestly, never knew that ever existed like Westerly or Exeter.

I have done service work out of state like in Flint, Michigan. This service work is what actually

changed me because in a town in such desperate need, no one, not even their government, was

there to help get what they needed. The Greene School has open doors for me that I never knew

that were there, and it gave me a chance to at least make something of my own life. And now it

is for the next and for the new people who are floating in the same boat as I was, to take those

opportunities that others will not take because of fear. And fear is what stops you from doing
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something that can change your life and your perspective in anything else in your life. Now my

final word. For the new incomers and for the ones in the process, TAKE THAT CHANCE. That

chance that you are scared to take, will for sure, change something within you, and it will bring

out the best in you.