Hey, my name is Yurii but I prefer people call me Yura. I came to the United States four years ago for summer work and decided to get my economics degree here. My native country is Ukraine where I used to live in a very small town with a country life style. Many people, including my family, keep cattle, pig, and hens for their own use. Such surroundings are great for kids who like exploring everything. I used to explore my neighborhood a lot, but it did last very long. My parents did not want me to get lost. Very soon the main way of observation the world became thought reading books. “The world is very learned. What a big book, captain, might be made with all that is known!” “And what a much bigger book still with all that is not known!” This is the statement from my favorite book The Mysterious Island written by Jules Verne. When I read this thesis the first time, I memorized it immediately. I saw a lot of wisdom in it and a very deep meaning. Humans have accumulated an amazing amount of knowledge about animals, herbs, oceans, the sky, the Earth, the Universe but all of that is only a small piece of information we know. There are much more things that we do not know or haven’t discovered yet.

Unfortunately such style of life had its consequences. Instead of socializing with people, I have lived in my little world where life is only “white and black”. Such style of life has made me stubborn and inflexible to the real life surround others.

My life has slightly changed when I entered the university and started to live in the dorms with other students. I found that we have a lot in common and shared similar ideas. Of course, there were guys that had very odd interests and which I preferred to avoid. I made only few friends, but I was sure that I can trust them. We often went to play pool, soccer, ping-pong, chess and, in general, spend a lot of time together studying.

Coming back to my life in United States and New York City, I want to say that there are many opportunities and interesting things. Unfortunately, because I am not a social person, to start the conversation with strangers for me is very hard . It is out of my zone of comfort.  What should I ask? How should I ask? Can I ask this? These questions scare me and often I avoid having a conversation with people. I clearly aware of this problem and I am trying to fight with it.

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