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.
I have to say, being someone who has never lived anywhere else, I'm a little jealous. Travel is one of the best ways to experience different cultures, which have major influences on the cities and spaces around them. In my opinion, there is no better way to learn about a group of people or time than to physically experience it yourself. There are no better tools for designers than travel and experience.
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