Freewrite #1
My name is Brian Balduzzi and I was actually born and raised in Syracuse, NY and wouldn’t have it any other way. I fell in love with Syracuse University since I was a child and only spent one year living outside of this city. There are so many different sections of Syracuse from very rich to poor and I am from a small suburb on the west side. Many would say that it is a mainly white middle class area. I loved growing up in this small suburb because it was a small neighborhood where all of my close friends and I could grow up and go and do whatever we wanted without any worries. Even though growing up in this small suburb was nice, there was still a lot of Syracuse that I had to learn about as I grew older. It is a very culturally diverse city and there are many different groups of people who live throughout it. There are Irish sections, Italian sections, Native American sections, African American and many more. I grew up not really knowing the difference between cultures because I always encountered such diversity I felt as if it was normal and this is how everywhere was. It wasn’t until I was older until I learned the different races and realized how diverse my home city was. I learned the wealthier and poorer parts through different signs and symbols that I would encounter while traveling through the city. One important part that is a reservation with many native symbols on buildings, and I can even remember seeing the billboard in the syllabus and having to ask my parents what it said about the Onondaga reservation.
With the many sections of Syracuse, there are many different schools. Kids are all divided up by areas, and this mainly means rich or poor, or by culture, such as Lafayette being mostly Native and Fowler being mainly Black, and many more. There are many predominantly white rich schools, and also very poor public schools. I made the choice to attend a private catholic school, which I think was the best choice. There was another very wealthy private school, but my high school was a lower end private school. I enjoyed it because in my class were kids from each part of the city. There were kids from all 4 corners and it is funny because by the time you reach high school, you can tell who is from which end. I found this to be a great experience because you are not stuck with only the kids in your neighborhood but you learn to understand the city and the people who live in it as a whole. I found myself going to parts of town I had never been to go see friends, and each part of the city was different. The only problem with so much diversity is that there were power struggles at times. In one point in 10th grade there was a sort of “war” between races. The blacks and whites could not get a long and our school was said to be a “dangerous” place because of this, but for the most part all the groups got along within our diverse high school community.
In my opinion, the private school experience was so much better to realize how great our city is and how well the different areas could be together as one. I now know people from all areas of Syracuse and I know many that are stuck in their little “bubble” thinking that their section is the best in Syracuse and not knowing much outside of their hometown. Where I grew up has created an open mind for all who learned to accept that power can be divided, but also learned the different signs throughout the city that meant different things, such as rich, poor, or something cultural.
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