Julia Fox -- a Personal Narrative This is the story about my venture into a business start-up, about my travels and my education, and what I have learned along the way. I was born in Italy but I moved to the United States at the age of six, to live with my father, an American. Through the years Italy seems to always have called my name; I made many trips to Italy to visit my mother, my brother and the rest of my family.

Most of my friends don't realize that I speak and read in Italian fluently because of the fact that my mother constantly speaks to me in my native language. In fact, she has never spoken to me in English. I have learned through research that a bilingual person's brain "…has two active language systems which work simultaneously" which helps my "general reasoning" -- and may prevent me from getting Alzheimer's disease (Diamond, 2011).

The language, the culture, and the fact that my mother (and family) was in Italy, hence I went back to Italy to finish the final two years of my high school experience. My goal was to eventually request credits because of my extensive background in Italian.

As a small child I always had a strong passion for fashion. As I grew, my love for style got even stronger so I decided to make a career out of it. Well, my dreams began to transition into reality in January 2013; that was when I created my own fashion...

However, I the project was more than I could manage myself, so I partnered with a childhood, trusted friend. Together we have achieved a level of success, and my dream is on solid footing.
Our business is predominantly a knit wear brand at a contemporary price point, albeit we also produce some leather and fur pieces that are more expensive. However, even though I am pursuing my dream with passion, it has not been an easy task. Like every challenging journey, there have been plenty up and downs.

Nevertheless, I must say that it has been very exciting along with challenging. For example, we have had the opportunity to see the world. When I say the world I am referring to our travels to eastern nations such as Vietnam, where we had the opportunity to explore workshops and factories that produce items similar to ours. One of my favorite places to visit was Hong Kong; it was in Hong Kong that I learned a lot about the business. I was able to learn so much about how they make their fabrics and how they run the knit factories.

Even though I did not have much experience in business management, I have to admit there were times when I thought about just throwing in the towel and pursuing other options, but we learned from our mistakes. Certainly I learned that failure written in pencil can be erased.

Having an education under your belt is priceless; my dad always told me "everything at one point can be taken from you, but what you have inside your head- that is yours forever." So I followed his advice, graduating from an alternative high school called City AS School which catered to kids who basically didn't like school. They set up internships all over the city and you can collect credits that way. I enjoyed this a lot because I wasn't constantly feeling like I was wasting my time.

With that said, my interest in requesting credits in Business dates back to my early years, visiting other people fashion shops while in Italy. This gave me first-hand experience of commercial life, where I often was able to engage with various aspects of the business. I love finding out how numerous aspects of businesses bond together in an organization and how fashion is used…