Introduction

Hello, my name is Phillips Li. I’m a junior studying Computer Information Systems. I’ve lived in NYC my whole life. Native to Queens, I went to high school in Brooklyn, and currently go to college in Manhattan. Before high school, I was a very awkward and introverted person. But being a commuter drastically change my life for the better, for it forced me to develop and hone my interpersonal skills. The most difficult transition I would have to say, was going from my middle school to high school. Very few people from my middle school actually left the borough. Not only did I have very little friends to begin with in middle school, my few friends that I did have remained in Queens to attend zoned schools. This meant that I was walking into a new building, new environment, and turning a whole new leaf all by myself. It was a very lonely but eye opening experience. The first two years of high school, I made it my personal goal to become a socialite within my grade. I was successful in doing so. The time I spent learning social queues was not time wasted because these skills carried on into college. It made my life significantly easier. Not only did I become a very sociable person, I became someone good enough at the trade that people around me aspired to be just as good. But being such a sociable person is extremely exhausting. It takes a lot of energy and focus and takes away from a lot of other great parts of life and I’m now on a little break from this. Purposely being a little more introverted, I’ve been focused on developing myself further by picking my guitar up again after over a decade of having it sit in the dust. That’s pretty much how and why I spent my break.