When I was in preschool, I wanted to be a professional ice skater when I grew up so that I could wear the sparkly leotards that the ice skaters wore on TV. That quickly changed into wanting to be a cashier at a grocery store, which then changed into wanting to be a bird trainer (as pictured to the right when I brought my four parakeets in for my first grade show-and-tell… I seriously thought I was a bird whisperer) or a Disney princess or the best one yet – a whale.

When I got into high school, that’s when I really started to think about what I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing. At the time, I was still heavily involved in and passionate about music. From taking part in piano competitions and Certificate of Merit events to teaching younger children how to play basic piano songs, I always had the thought in the back of my mind that maybe I would want to pursue my love for piano and become a piano teacher. However, as a teenager, my career goals were so easily altered based off of what my peers were saying and doing. Hearing my peers say that they wanted to pursue medical school to become brain surgeons or that they had dreams of curing cancer really made me feel like some of my potential career goals weren’t good enough. My thoughts changed from “Do I want to pursue my love for piano and become a piano teacher?” to “Should I just be a lawyer? A doctor? Maybe a scientist?”. Pursuing my passions just didn’t feel good enough anymore. I started to value social acceptance from my peers over the acceptance of what I really actually wanted to do – teach.

It did not help that I was also feeling a lot of pressure from my parents at home to maintain good grades, so that I could get into a good university, so that I could get a good job, so that I could make good money and yada yada yada. Not to mention, my dad was constantly drilling the thought into my mind that I would be happy working in the science or medical field just because that is what every other Asian child I was surrounded by was doing. It was all deeply ingrained into my brain, like I was some sort of a robot just listening to what everyone else was telling me to do. I took into account what everyone else wanted for me, but never what I really wanted for myself.

Fast forward a couple years to my first year at UC Davis, where lo and behold, I carried over the pressures I felt from home and school. I chose to pursue a degree in biology to become a physician’s assistant in the future, which I knew at this point I did not really want to pursue whatsoever. Long story short, I fell into a major depressive rut during spring quarter of my second year, and had to withdraw from that quarter to avoid the major potential GPA drop from my failing classes.

During my quarter off, I went to therapy, surrounded myself with positive influences and most importantly, I got my dog, who has positively influenced my life in more ways than I could have imagined. With a lot of love and support, I decided during this time that I was NOT going to keep living for other people or making excuses or putting off my passions. I really decided to take a hold of my life and to chase the thoughts I had always kept in the back of my head. I changed my major to psychology, which is a field I have always researched and loved, and I started helping children learn piano again, which led me to babysitting, tutoring and eventually getting the opportunity to work as an assistant preschool teacher in Davis.

Fast forward again to now, and I can honestly say that I have never felt more confident in and happy with myself and my aspirations. I have really learned to embrace all that I am, the good and the bad because despite all of the obstacles, my life has led me right to where I should be. And that is sitting in bed with my best friend, Tobi curled up next to me, writing this blog post for an amazing teaching program that I get to attend at USF with some pretty awesome people (even though it is currently 1:30 AM and I have work in 6 hours).