The Power of vision

Remember when you were a kid-around 7 or 9 years old- and you used to play with your imaginary friends and pretend you were a teacher to your toys or a perhaps a doctor? And when your mom used to ask you, “What do you want to be when you grow older?” What was your answer? Mine was a teacher. Although later on the vision of myself switch to the one of a banker- even though I had no idea what made a banker a banker- I always found myself taking the role of secretary/cashier/manager whenever playing to the restaurant with my friends-this time real friends. I was always chosen to handle the “money” (monopoly money) because I was responsible, organized, and good on Math :D I was happy counting the bills time after time after time; the idea of handling money and being on charged of the “restaurant” was exciting. So I grew up thinking I wanted to work in a bank.

Now, fast forward yourself to your last year of high school. Your plan is most probably to graduate, go into college for the next 4 years get a degree and hopefully not touch a book ever again after the age of 22, which is when you were planning to graduate from college, at least for scholastic purposes. Well, that’s was my goal on life. I used to daydream about being 22 with a bachelor’s degree and a nice job. Wow! All the rest of my life to enjoy, to travel around the world, to explore, to live.

Fast forward one more time, this time to the present. I am 26 years old and still pursuing my 1^st bachelor degree. Not the vision of future that I had on mind when I was 18, right? Although I had a very well written idea of what I wanted my future to be like, life took me in a different direction when I turned 19. I was living in a different country-the USA- learning a different language-English- and knowing that there was no way I could graduate college at age 22. I was working full-time, when I had never worked before in my life-and going to school part-time, taking English classes. My point is that at age 19 you are thinking you will turn 22 and will have this awesome job, and that everything is going to be happily ever after but at age 26, you just want to graduate! Give me a piece of carton that says I have a degree- I don’t care on what- because at age 26 you have realized that your major and career paths are not always related. For instance, I have friends who graduated from college as English majors and are now working in the financial industry. So at age 26 I decided that wherever this life decides to take me- I was going to have at least 3 set goals.

My 1st goal is to get my degree not later than when I turned 28. For this I need to take 5 courses per semester for the next 4 semesters in order to graduate by Spring 2012. I decided that my major will be Economics. My 2nd goal is to get an internship next Spring 2011; an internship in a field related to my career which will mean to forgo some paid hours at my current full time job. But the trade off is worth it since the internship could potentially lead me to a job in the field I want to work on. This internship will of course be in the city which would lead me to my third goal: move into the city. I currently live in New Jersey and commuting everyday into the city is killer, and even though I could get a place in Manhattan, I hate the idea of having to share a tiny apartment with other people and ended up paying what I pay for a 3 bedroom house, with a nice-size kitchen, living room, backyard and private parking space in NJ. I want a place of my own. So far this is the sequence- get the internship, get the job, get the nice salary, and get the apartment. This moves me to my 3^rd goal: work for the next three years and go back to school for my master. I have always heard it is better to invest more money in your post graduate degree than in your undergraduate degree and that’s what I will do- I want go to Columbia University and get a Master in Economics or an MBA. Even though I haven’t yet completely figured it out how I will accomplish this goal, I have decided to apply to the honors program at Baruch (I graduated with Honors at the Community College where I come from, so I thought if I could make it once, I can make it twice) to increase the possibilities of being accepted into Columbia. Of course on the unlikely event I don’t get accepted in Columbia, ( I say unlikely event because I will get accepted :D) I will then work towards accomplishing my 4^th goal: field work for the United Nations. I have always feel this drive on me towards helping people, specially kids, kids that haven’t had the same opportunities I did, so I think the UN is the perfect option for me. The pay is not exquisite-but think about it-even with a $35,000 year salary, what expenses could you possibly have living in a third world country? I mean, where are you going to buy the super expensive Coach purse? Or the Jimmy Choo shoes or the Ralph Lauren clothes if the idea of a mall is almost non-existent. You could easily save up to 100% of your whole salary because most of the time, UN field workers live on the communities they are working with, and the food is provided by the UN. Even if it is a volunteer/no paid job, I will still want to work for them. How I will accomplish this goal? Networking and French lessons. Getting a job in the UN is a very difficult thing to accomplish, even for those field jobs there is a lot of people applying but I have two friends who interned in the UN and although their current position is not of field workers anymore (they had worked their way up) they have offered me to connect me with the right people once I’m ready to work for them. To work for the United Nations there is an indispensable requisite: to speak a second language which it has to be an official UN language: French or Spanish. Since I already speak Spanish-my first language- I have registered for French lessons at the Alliance française in NYC starting this upcoming semester to increase my chances to be elected once I apply for a job. This 4^th goal is kind of movable; it can happen at age 31/32 on the event I’m not accepted into Columbia or at age 35/36.

On the personal level, there are three other things I want to accomplish: learn to play the violin, learn to dance flamenco-a traditional Spanish dance and do the Inca Trail. For the first one, I have already started taking violin lessons once a week since the beginning of this year. Flamenco lessons I will register on summer time and for the Inka trail, which is 4-day trekking through the Sierra and Forest of Peru, climbing to altitudes that surpass the 12,000 feet above the sea level, I have decided to start training for it for the next summer, before I launch that desire internship.

This time life will not trick me, this time I’m ready to succeed. :D