Nayat Gonzalez

Professor Zayas

English 21003

Introductory letter

05 Feb 2025

Life changes

Nice to meet you all, my name is Nayat Gonzalez, I’m 20 years old, I was born in Colombia and I’m passionate about science, but not Pablo Escobar type of science, (just in case that was the first thing that came to your mind when you heard “Colombia”) but Marie Curie or Jacobo Grinberg type of science  since ninth grade, but it wasn’t always like that. When I was little, of course I wanted to be veterinarian, singer, actress, baker… Well, I‘d  better skip to the science part.

Medicine was always an option, in ninth grade I started taking chemistry, biology and physics, the last one I did liked it at all, but the first one woke up a big interest on me, the way that you can create whatever you want through science and that everything you see around you and even yourself it’s science, it’s awesome to me. However, at tenth and eleventh grade, my go for career was engineering thinking at that time that I was good in math (kind of ironic now because I could never imagine myself on that career). Then, I decided to go for medicine and be a surgeon, I thought about everything, I knew for how much time I will I have to study,  how many years are for the general medicine and how many to become a surgeon and then how many more years would be for the specialization in oncology, I did research, watched videos, watched Grey’s anatomy (just the first season though), I had everything planned. Until I got here, I honestly don’t know what happened or if something influenced on this decision but I changed completely my mind about medicine. I realized that It wasn’t what I really wanted, that it wasn’t something I wanted to spend my time on, instead, every day I felt more and more like I wanted to study chemistry, the fact that I was also good on that, that I always remember the electronic configuration and I loved to do that and then I started taking inorganic chemistry and suddenly a world of possibilities cross my mind so I decided in that moment that I wanted to study chemistry and learn everything about it.

Now that I’ve said all my academic interests and made myself look “interesting” enough, I would talk about my life; so as I mentioned earlier, I was born in Colombia, Bogota, the capital and I lived there for most of my life, there I was living with my dad, my mom and my younger brother, I also have an older brother but he moved long time ago so he only went home to visit us kind of often.

I never worked there for more than a couple weeks or a month since my parents always wanted me to be focused on my study, so I was, I was usually one of the best students of my class, in fact I would’ve graduated with honors but then, before I could finish high school, I moved to New York, I went from the Capital of Colombia to “The capital of the world”. Imagine how excited I was feeling, mostly because we didn’t even had the time to prepared for this change, we thought about it one day but we didn’t mentioned again . We knew the idea was floating on our minds until one Friday, mi mom called me and she said: “Hija, they are selling me the tickets and I had the money right here, should I buy them?” And of course, without hesitate, I said yes, so she bought them and right the next day, Saturday at night, we were boarding heading to Cancun, (because we clearly didn’t have a visa and if we were to have enough money to be eligible for a visa, we wouldn’t be moving to US, honestly) anyway.

The adventure started on May 20^th 2022, but we got to New York after exactly one month, on June 20^th. We landed at La Guardia Airport, and still don’t knowing how, we ended up in Roosevelt, Queens when we were actually going to Bronx. After a few hours and $30 dollars less, we finally arrived to The Bronx and it’s been two years now, and it’s still crazy to me and sometimes I can’t even believe it but I think New York was the perfect place to live, not only for how amazing it is or how tall are the buildings since they also are in Bogota, but because same as the buildings, New York is very similar to Bogota. I know it’s weird but somehow, which I can’t completely explain, it is.

I won’t lie, at first I didn’t liked it, and all I wanted was go back to my city, my home, with all my friends, my dad, my older brother and my old life, because I moved only with my mom and my younger brother at first, it was just in case something happened and we had to go back at least my dad would be there with our things, (later on to now we realized he’s just better there, je).

The existential crisis and desires to go back only lasted less than a year, I’d say it’s only while you get used to, you make friends along the way, get a job or go to school, etc. You start to assimilate living here as a new life, a new beginning, and a new opportunity. So, now the problem is that I don’t want to go back, I create a new life, new friends, I am going to college now, which even if you are the #1 student, in Colombia is really hard to get into an University and be able to pay it, so for now, I’m pretty glad to be here and look at everything we have done this two  years.

Honestly, I don’t know what else to share here besides that I don’t have a favorite color, food or a favorite type of music, I’m a big fan of  Billie Eilish though, and The Weeknd, and many other singers from my country. I also love my country so so much, the culture, the people but mostly the food, here the food can’t compete at all with Colombian food, actually, I’d say the food is what I miss the most and the celebrations like 7 de velitas.

Yeah, I’m still very attached to my country and hopefully I will always be but for now I’m very grateful and glad to be here, sharing with you all.