Growing up, my father was in the army so we moved quite a bit. All of the elementary schools that I attended were either private international schools or schools on military bases. It wasn’t until middle school, when my dad retired from the military, that I first experienced a public school. The middle school I attended was very culturally and economically diverse, as was my high school. While I appreciated the diversity, I did not appreciate all of the drug dealing, fighting, and bullying that took place in the halls. It was hard to avoid getting mixed up with the wrong crowd and I watched a lot of my middle school classmates spiral out of control. On the plus side, it was in middle school that I met my two oldest and dearest friends.