When I first decided to come to UH, I was planning on becoming a dentist. I wanted to start off doing work with a group like Doctors Without Borders, gaining experience and helping those that need aid the most. However, I got here and it hit me like.. Wow, if I go through with this, it will be 8 years of intense school, and I will be stuck in that field for ever. So, I started thinking about other fields. With a business degree, you have the ability to make as much money, if not more than a doctor, you can help people in need (if you choose to), and you have a lot more flexibility with the kind of job you get. For these reasons, I am strongly considering going into the Business College here.
I am not completely sure what I want to do with my future, however I know that I want to have plenty of options. I used to think that I wanted to live in Hawaii after graduation, because this is my favorite place in the world, however I am finding that I miss all the people that have been involved in my life in the past. I wish there was a way that I could get all the people that have impacted my life together, to live around me for my whole life. Selfish that may sound, but I think everyone wants that.
Being here has taught me that being a strong, independent person doesn't mean you are able to live far away and take care of yourself. It means that in any situation you are set in, whether in your high school cafeteria with your best friends, or in a packed college lecture hall where you know no one, you know who you are and you are capable of standing up for yourself. An independent person will fight for what they believe regardless of the consequences and may appear to be alone in their ideologies, however, at the end of the day we all have a mom, and no matter how hard our exterior may seem we all want to go home. When I came to college I thought it was shameful to go home on weekends or to call my parents everyday. Now that I am alone, I long to go home, lay on the couch with my mom and have her rub my head and play with my hair.
The advice I would give to a senior in high school right now, would be... enjoy every second with you parents, siblings and friends, because after this it will never be the same. Someone told me a quote the other day, "You will never be as young as you are today." Every day you are growing and changing, and things will never go back to the way they were, so cherish every second that you live through, because you will never get it back.
