Dreaming and chasing — before reading on, think for a second: do you have a dream? Dreams aren’t big or small. Your dream could be going into space to do research, or just getting good grades and not having to retake any finals. The whole point is in dreaming. You need to have a dream, otherwise you can’t see where, why, how and with whom you’re going. With a dream in mind, you can sketch a rough roadmap in your head — a skeleton — and then over time figure out who and what fills it in. Without one, you’ll spin around aimlessly, and finding the middle path will be hard and exhausting.
Let me give you my own example. I’ve wanted to be a pilot since I was 5 or 6. My mom tells the story — at 5 or 6, I saw a plane in the sky, turned to her and said “Mom, I want to drive one of those.” That stuck. Ask my elementary school teacher, my closest friends, any of my relatives — they’ll all tell you my dream was to be a pilot. But here’s the thing: dreams can change or be put on pause. I’ve started letting go of the idea of being a pilot as a profession. Around 9 years ago I met computers, and slowly turned into a computer geek. I genuinely enjoy what I do. So with computers in the picture, piloting became more of a hobby for me — a thing I’d like to learn — I can’t quite name it. But really, getting on a plane is a wonderful feeling — up in the sky, away from the crowd. And honestly, the uniforms were always cool to me too, still are. Now, though, learning to code is its own kind of joy.
When I started Computer Engineering, I realized something: do I want to stay in a fixed profession running on a routine without really creating anything new, or do I want to keep producing new things? Honestly, novelty has always been more important to me. Self-improvement, representing my faith and my country well — these matter to me. There have been moments I thought “I wish I’d done X” or “I wish I’d done Y,” but I never lost hope, and I kept dreaming and working, and I will keep doing both.
No matter how big your dream is, don’t give up. Even if there’s a voice in your head saying “no one in the world can do this, how could I?” — why couldn’t you? Just dream, work for your dream, and leave the rest to God.
By the way, if you ask me “what’s your current dream?” — I have many. On the way to a big dream, there are smaller dreams scattered along the path. As I knock those off, the sum of the small dreams will hopefully carry me to the big one, God willing.
