A small deviation.

Mini-essay, anyone?

This is from Tufts:
There is a Quaker saying: ''Let your life speak.'' Describe the environment in which you were raised--your family, home, neighborhood or community--and how it influenced the person you are today.

The presence of the letter “r” in my vocabulary usually hides the fact that I am not a New Hampshire native. Up until high school, I lived with my family in Malden, Massachusetts, in a nice house on a nice street right outside a patch of Project housing. My parents are humorous and loving people who always made it perfectly clear to me that, as soon as we could, we were moving permanently to our summer home on a lake in Barnstead. These four years “up north” have shown me that there are still places where sidewalks aren’t necessary and strangers greet each other on the road, but the complete removal from the city’s grit and diversity doesn’t seem right, either. I still walk and talk faster than my friends at school; they laugh at me when I let the occasional Boston slang slip into conversations, and I laugh at them when they don’t know how to use public transportation. This double home has reaffirmed the value of balance and taught me how to adapt. Even now, I find beauty both in sunlight filtered in patches through green leaves and the flickering glow of a streetlamp on worn, cracked sidewalks.