Hey there I'm Ronald Roa, but for short Ron is just fine. I want to start off with a little background on me to let you know how I was influenced growing up to pick the career I am going to school for currently at The Art Institute of Tampa for Interior design. First ten years of my life I moved around alot until I got to the Tampa Bay area in March of '94. Being born in Queens, New York in 1983 only being there for about a year and a half then moving down to Miami lived there for a few years. After Miami we went back up north to Trenton, New Jersey lived there for a little over a year, then went to Salem, Pennsylvannia. We lived there a almost two years then moved to Good ol Chicago, Illinois. From there we finally got to Tampa and have been here ever since except for when I went back up to Chicago for a year after I finished high school.
Moving around growing up I obviously lived in several different apartments and houses, so i got to see different designs and spaces throughtout my childhood. After we got to Tampa we first moved to an apartment and lived there for a little while until we found a house. One of the things I loved when we were looking for a house was going to all the various model homes in many communities in the Tampa area. I was exposed to that basically my whole life. Even now I still go to model homes just to look at different spaces. Growing up i Found Architectural Digest magazine which i absolutely love. So from there I knew I wanted to be in this field.
After high school I moved to Chicago because I went to school up there for a little while going for accounting and worked at my families accounting firm up there. Well needless to say after that experience I could not do that for the rest of my life. So I came back down here and for the next few years I just kind of lived life and had fun. Finally at the age of 24 I said I need to start my life and go back to school. So I did some research on schools here and it was between going to USF for architecture or at The Art Institute of Tampa. Decided to go where I am currently getting my bachelor's for interior design. Chose the Art Institute because it is more hands on and smaller class sizes. Once I finish here am planning to hopefully get a job out there somewhere, work for two years then start doing the process to take the NCIDQ exam. After that whole ordeal I do want to go back to school and get my Master's degree in architecture at Sci-Arc in California. One thing I do know is that Cali is my final destination and will live happily ever after there.
