In the last two years, especially since the beginning of the pandemic I learned

about myself that I really feel the need and I want to step out of my comfort zone.
This great desire of escaping from my inner world and becoming a more
extroverted type of person came once I realised that life is very impredictible and
very short and I would love to create a lot of beautiful memories and have unique
experiences with my loved ones: my family and friends. This revelation appeared
to me once I wondered myself: What are my aspirations? What I want and who I
want in my future? What are truly my passions? And I after I searched for the right
answers I understood I was not happy and fulfilled with my current version of me,
I wanted a change in my life and that change had to start with my first. So this is
how I started to put my life together and slowly became more open minded to
new oppurtunities and experiences but the real achievement for me is that I
became more couragious, more open to make new friends, meet new people and
try new things, even the same public speaking. Because afterall all these things
mentioned above will help me develop in the well desired version of me, will help
me to become a successful person and fulfill my dreams.

In fact, a situation when I tried something new and it didn’t turn out well or at
least didn’t really live up to my expectations happened recently. So, at the
beggining of april this year, my sister and I came up with the idea of starting a
business of our own by creating and selling custom t-shirts on Instagram. That
idea sounded very promising at the time- making our own source of money by
having fun doing t-shirts? We said: why not. But we quickly realised it wasn’t all
sunshine and rainbows, the process wasn’t actually that easy. But with a lot of
research and involvement we maneged to find a source from where we could get
all the materials we needed in order to put together our little business. But as we
didn’t expect, that wasn’t all it took to get our business off the ground, the
business required a lot of implication, time, investements, patience and time for
succes. I won’t lie it wasn’t all that bad, we had some orders but that barely
covered our costs. What I learned from this experience is that success doesn’t
come over night and it takes a lot of passion, motivation and hardwork in order to
achieve that because succes is when everyday you get a little better than before,
success means that you continue and don’t give up when you fail. So afterall this
experiences made me realise what of a great experience is to try new things and
face new situations, it maures you in the best way possible. I don’t regret it at all.
In fact, we continue to work and improve our little bussiness, now we also sell
huddies.
I believe that the last three years had a major impact on me, as well as on every
teenager, or at least these few years have had an important role on our way of
perceving the world around us, because as we step in this new phase of life, we
need to face various questions and experiences that force us to mature and be
more independent.
It might seem strange, but an experience that made me learn a lot about life in
general, about social relationships and about my values is one of my activities that
I do outside the school, which is ballet. Ballet has been one of my first passions
since I was seven years old and it has had a big influence and impact on my way of
perceving the world and the things that I enjoy, especially in the last three years,
because I think these few years helped me develop my character and better
discover my personality due to the entry in a new phase of life and becoming a
teenager which forced me to mature and grow up. A lot of people might wonder
how could an activity such as ballet learn you anything about life. But this
experinence helped me a lot to improve my social skills, because as you attend
this activity you came face to face with teenagers from other schools, teenagers
that have different interests, activities and passions and I believe that as you
comunicate and interact with them you learn a lot about the world around you
and discover that you have maybe the same values or the same passions, in any
case you aren’t that different in the end, because you will always find something
in common with people of value and you can always learn something from them.
And I believe all these experiences can help anyone be an excellent exchange
student, because either way you learn about new cultures, different religions and
multiple interests. Another important thing that ballet thaught me in the past
three years is the love of beauty and art I am sure it helped me develop an eye for
the refinement of artistry.