Rose moved to the United States from Jamaica at the age of fourteen. She has lived in New York City since and has flourished both academically and socially. Here, she comments on her initial hesitance to move to the United States:
I actually didn’t want to move here, because I thought I already had like my life established in Jamaica and I had all my friends there. And so moving here was sort of bittersweet, like I did want to come and see what it was all about, but I also felt kind of lonely and weird, because I was an only child and I guess because I was in school my experience kind of centered around school. In Jamaica, my school was more of like a social thing. People could walk around and hangout and there’s this like big football field and you know like it was a very laid back atmosphere. And then here it was very institutional. It was very just four corners in a building that went up a couple of floors and it was just really weird to get used to. Um, and also like I didn’t really know anyone and I’m sure I had a weird accent. People were just like, “what?” so yeah I mean that was the biggest challenge but I got over it pretty quickly.”
