Changed Mentality - Personal Essay

Changed Mentality

Life has its way of changing the way you see things for the better or the worse. Growing up in Cuba, a small town located in Alabama, everything was changing overall. I had to take the school bus to another town just go to school which was about a twenty minute drive from our house. York was the name of that town and the school I attended was Sumter County High School. This is where my journey began for my life changing experience.

In school, some of my favorite subjects were writing, history and science. However, on this very warm day, something sparked in my mind during history class. In our school, our history was a little different from history that people taught in other states; it was about the history in Alabama, more than worldwide but we still learned about other things. Our history teacher was Mrs. Obmba. She was a fairly old teacher around her early forties, long curly hair, brown-skinned and wore glasses. The teacher was telling us about the way people lived, their culture and how being around different races matter. Some of the kids in my school was simple-minded and really didn't care about other people and different races. Mostly because, I went to an all-black school and we weren't exposed to different races. We were basically taught in a certain way, it actually forced your mind to be one tracked. As the teacher was telling us about the topic, she started a class discussion and asked kids how we felt about races and how it affected the U.S. She pointed to one kid called Duke and she questioned him, "How would you feel if you went to a different place and you were a different race but the place you were at, weren't and you was the only stand out?" Duke replied with a smirk but in a serious tone, "Well, it really wouldn't matter to me because if they said something out of line, they would get hit in the face". The rest of the class laughed because Duke was known to be a jokester and always fighting in school. The teacher didn't think it was funny. The look on her face seemed like she was about grip the chalk in her hand and throw it in Duke's face as if she were a baseball pitcher. I could tell she wasn't mad, but accurately disappointed in his answer. She put the down chalk and headed towards her seat but sat on the desk. The look on her face was a sad expression. She let out a sigh and wiped her forehead.

"Why would you resort to violence to something like that?" asked Mrs. Obmba waving her hands around. Why would you throw a punch before you throw your mind into a different mentality? Everyone around the room started talking about how they would also be ready to fight or some would just leave the area and not confront them. The teacher was telling us that our mentality was simple-minded. She said that other schools up north were very different than southern. She said the schools were much bigger, more diverse, and much more advance. Because this school isn't a racially diverse one, we act different and think different around other races. I sat there and looked up at the ceiling drowning out all possible noises and started to ponder. She does have a point though, I've heard from my mom and other relatives that lived up north said the schools where much better. Even though I wouldn't throw a punch, I also had that mentality in which she was talking about. Generally, it's called southern mentality. What she meant by mentality was, it can be a variety of ways to explain it, but mostly it's based on how people live, view things and how they react in the south only. One girl named Erica raised her hand and said, "Mrs. Obmba, it's time for lunch!" Mrs. Obmba turned to the clock and replied, "Erica, every day you say it's time when it's not, but since it's Friday, we can go five minutes early. As we got up and walked to the lunchroom, it appeared that we had a new student in the school. The boy was tall, slim with blonde hair and he was Caucasian. He was standing in line from another class and he didn't have the right uniform yet so it was obvious that he was a new student. The other students were in the hall talking about the boy and why was he here in our school. Some laughed, some just stared at him but he never turned around to see. One kid from our class named Horace decided it was time for him to confront the boy. Horace was about 5'7, brown-skinned with a low haircut. He was muscular due to the fact he played football and he was somewhat of a bully in middle school. As Horace walked to the boy, other people were encouraging him by saying stuff like: Yeah, go tell that dude he ain't supposed to be here, beat him up and scare him. When Horace approached