1) I come from a world where most of the time dreams never come true. It doesn’t matter how much you fight for them, they just keep running away. When I was in college, in my country (Cuba), I was filling a paper like this one telling what I wanted to study as a major. At that moment all I wanted to be was a Designer. I still remember that day perfectly, it was raining a lot, and the restless wind start to get inside the classroom making that unique noise of horror movies.
Our professor was sitting in his desk waiting patiently for us to finish our assignment. While we were working on it he stand up and said: “remember that everything you want to be it’s going to change the way you live and the things you like”. I didn’t understood what he was talking about, but now I do. Two years later I was almost done with school. I was happy, dreaming of working at the Industrial Design Building. Then a professor comes to me and says: I’m sorry but there’s no more space in the building.
And I asked in a sad tone: Why? … He told me this: Right now the country doesn’t need designers so they are cutting down the jobs, I’m sorry. That’s why I came to this country. Here I have the opportunity to start a new life were everything is possible, I just have to keep fighting, because people that refuse to get nothing but the best, they often get it. Back in my country, family and friends was all that matters. They are the ones that make life so much better; they were always there for me, in the good times and in the bad ones.
The school was that place where people of different cultures and religions where united in a wonderful group call students. All this has made me who I am at this moment; a person that never surrenders. And even though I regret some things, I’m happy that they happened that way, because I learned from them that life is all about loving and never giving up. Also I learned that everything happens for a reason, our duty is to find it. 2) I’m working towards a Psychology major because I’ve always been interested in understanding how human brain works and why people do what they do.
I have a little bit of experience in this field because I’ve read a lot of self improvement and psychology books and I’ve helped a lot of my friends to go through hard times in their lives. This takes me back to Cuba again. I was sitting in the bus stop with my best friend, called Christian. In just an instant a noisy car passed by and the only words I heard from my friend was “I broke”. Once the car disappeared in the foggy distance I asked him: You broke what? And he looked down and said: I broke up with my girlfriend.
There was a long silence after this and nothing came out of my mouth. Then he raised his head and looked at me and I noticed his watery eyes. That was when I decided to help him with everything I could. This is what I told him: Chris, she will never find a person that will love her the way you did. You were her everything, you were always helping and making her feel good and beautiful. Once she is away from you she will start missing every part of you, and then she will regret the decision that she took.
And even though, don’t be sad, take this as a lesson to understand what wasn’t working and why. Go out with some friends and girls and enjoy your new girlfriend: Freedom. There are a lot of women out there waiting for a guy like you. My goal with this conversation wasn’t to elevate his ego, my true goal was to give him hope and to make him understand that there’s a whole world out there waiting to be conquered and that if something makes you feel bad there’s always a solution, you just have to stand up and go for it.
My friend was thankful to me for what I did and he encouraged me to go for Psychology as a professional career because he said I knew how to stay calm and how to face most of the problems that people struggle with. Days passed by and my desire to work helping people made me feel like I was becoming a better person so I started to read and learn everything I could about psychology and I even did some social experiments with my friends.
Thanks to all this I feel more prepared to confront problems in life and to help others to deal with their issues. All this experiences in my life made me change my idea of who I wanted to be. Now I don’t want to be sitting in a desk designing cars, products, machines or clothes. What I really want now it’s to be out there helping everyone and learning everything I can to make life easier and happier for all the people that surround me.
