The neighborhood I grew up in was quite unique, to say the least. It was a neighborhood notorious for embodying the hillbilly stereotype. I hate to say it, but the stereotypes are true most of the time. Bars are commonplace, pickup trucks haul couches and sport American flags, and teenage drinking plagues the neighborhood. Recently a house on my block was raided by the SWAT team after two people died from a methamphetamine overdose there. One was an adult and one was just a little kid—around nine years old. I remember my other neighbor routinely hosted gigantic college parties, with hundreds of party-goers, foamy kegs, and music blasting until the morning. My childhood hobbies consisted of lighting off fireworks, sliding down homemade “slip n slides” made of plastic liner and dish soap, and skating on an improvised backyard ice rink. Where I am from, the Fourth of July is the most celebrated holiday—more than Christmas and Easter—treated as an excuse to explode countless fireworks and consume endless amounts of alcohol. Similar to various socioeconomic situations experienced by students around the world, this upbringing was not one focused on education, but rather on having a good time. 

If you could not tell, my neighborhood prioritized just about everything over formal education. Teenagers like me who unfortunately grew up in similar environments learned a lot through experience rather than in a classroom setting. At the age of nine years old, one of my friends, his father, and I attempted to create black powder so we could manufacture our own fireworks. Combining aluminum powder and potassium perchlorate, we accidentally produced flash powder instead, lacking the explosive property of black powder we so desired. My father taught me to change the oil at the age of 12 years old, then showed me how to replace tires and brakes. My neighbor routinely smokes an entire pig, using a giant smoker and racks of wood. I learned how to repair bicycles watching my father work on mine, my siblings’ and my friends’. Every winter, my neighbors constructed a multi-yard outdoor ice rink using two by fours and huge sheets of plastic liner melted together at the seams using a hot iron. I did not know it at the time, but these experiences introduced me to chemistry, mechanical engineering, heat conduction, applications of physics, and freezing dynamics. Different backgrounds, such as my own, produce a versatile set of skills useful in a multitude of environments. 

Because of these unique childhood experiences, when I began high school, I had significantly more real-world experiences than my peers. Raised in neighborhoods with ideologies the polar opposite of my neighborhood’s, they were naive when it came to the real world. My personal experiences acted as the foundation upon which I was able to build up my knowledge of new topics in the classroom. Unique backgrounds such as my own allows some teenagers to think differently than others, maybe based on physical applications rather than abstract ideas. Seemingly negative backgrounds can result in positive benefits later in life. This can apply to everyone in any negative situation: even though the current situation looks bleak, it can eventually produce positive benefits in the long run.