My neighborhood

I am who I am because of the neighborhood I lived in. I lived in the downtown area of San Mateo, Were it seems that all the minorities are put there by the rich people. In the neighborhood I lived in you saw a lot of ethnicity's all living in the same area and going to the same school. In my neighborhood you saw the usual gang members fighting and causing chaos making my neighborhood the “Bad neighborhood” or the “Bad part of town”. So of course being Latino people thought I would end up in a gang or probably ending up in jail, at one point I did feel that I would end up like that. But I didn’t want to end up like that, I wanted show every one that I could do better. But I had a hard struggle with that because people really judge you and put you down for how you look and who hang out with. So that's what motivated me to do better to show who I really was, to prove to people I’m more than meets the eye. In High school (living in the same area) I went to school with a lot of my friends from my neighborhood. A lot of them got involve with the slang and ways of where we are from, but for me I picked a more different route. I used less slang and was at a point considered a “Mexican nerd” which I didn't mind because I would rather be something then nothing. But I started hanging with the wrong crowd and ended up being identified as a cholo which is slang for Mexican gangster. I started doing badly in school and messing around a lot. But then I saw what I was doing and that I was accomplishing nothing. So I got myself on top of things and got back on track, because I wanted to prove to everyone else that I could do better. And I wanted to set a good example for my little brother and show him that if you put your mind to it and work hard you can accomplish anything you want.