By Christopher D. Martinez/The Johnstown Breeze

While attending high school, my social studies teacher said, “In this class, instead of saying something is weird, we are going to say that it is different.”

My journey to the East Coast started a little over a year and a half ago. A 2010 degree from Colorado State University in the field of interior design launched me into what is known as the “real world.”

Spending a year in the job search, I finally received my call from a luxury German design company by the name of Poggenpohl. Filled with adrenaline, excitement, and three weeks to get to the East Coast, I sold and gave away most of what I had, threw what I needed into my 2001 Mercury Sable, and drove the 1,800 miles from Greeley to New York City. Not only was I taking a huge risk career wise, I was immersing myself in a culture completely foreign to me; a culture that I only heard about, and only experienced once before: the mean, the gritty, the relentless, the cut-throat world of big city life.