Where I Live Affects My Life

I've never really thought about where I grew up. It was always just a place I lived, never a location on a map. I have lived in the same house, same town for almost 20 years now - that's my entire life. I grew up in Lawrenceville in Gwinnett County. I went to an elementary school that was around the corner from my house. My high school is just down the street. The Mall of Georgia is fifteen minutes away. I lived a very sheltered life and everything I needed was within 30 minutes of my house.

My neighborhood is super small. There are literally only 20 houses on this pretty hilly street. My house has this great hill in the backyard that we used to go sledding down when it snowed. The woods behind my house were thoroughly explored by nine year old me accompanied by my little brother. When I was ten or eleven my dad bought the property next to ours (it wasn't part of our neighborhood, it was a preexisting house) and knocked the house down. So while most of my childhood was spent trying to swing high enough to see over the fence into the yard, I now had a whole unexplored acre of land that was great for “off road” biking. Most kids didn't get two acres of land to play on, so I consider myself very lucky. There is also a lake across the street from my neighborhood. My dad used to tell my brother and I stories about how it used to be accessible to go fishing and just sit on the banks and stare at the water. But since they built a neighborhood around it, we aren't allowed to do that anymore. My dad also tells us stories of when Old Peachtree Road (the road which my street comes off of) used to be quiet and not sound like a racetrack. He always talks about how many trees used to exist but are now gone to make room for neighborhoods, gas stations and my least favorite thing, the gun range. But I also have my own stories. I remember when Mountain View High School (my alma mater) and Twin Rivers Middle School (which my neighbor actually named) didn't exist.

I think living where I did has definitely influenced my life. I know for a fact that I could never buy a house that was right on top of the one next to it and only had a tiny yard. But also living in Gwinnett County has impacted my worldview. Almost all of friends growing up we're non-whites. My best friend in elementary school was the Hispanic girl who lived the down the street. We did everything together. We were inseparable. My best friends in high school were Hispanic and black. There were as many non-whites in my high school as there were whites. I never knew that there were high schools that weren't like mine until I came to UNG. I always hung out with Indians, Hispanics, and blacks and I never thought it was weird. This definitely gave me values that others might not have. I recognize the importance of culture and multiculturalism. I loved immersing myself in the Mexican cultural when I went down the street to play. (By the way Mexican bologna is amazing.) Everyone was on an equal playing field in the part of Gwinnett that I live in. But I also know that it isn't like this in all parts of the county. For instance, Meadow Creek High School is notoriously dubbed Ghetto Creek and I'm sure you can guess why. According to Theresa Riley, for those who grow up "in poor neighborhoods in Atlanta or Chicago often means that the chances of achieving higher incomes later in life are significantly lessened" (2014). I lucked out growing up in a wealthier part of the county (and not going to Ghetto Creek), but not everyone has that luxury or the opportunities and life values that I grew up developing. 

Riley, T. (2014, January 1). "Where You Grow Up Matters" | BillMoyers.com. Retrieved October 17, 2014, from http://billmoyers.com/2013/07/23/where-you-grow-up-matters/