Dreams

I’ve been thinking about dreams a lot lately. Dreams are, in my mind, the fuel that feeds the fire inside you. Without dreams, we would wander aimlessly. We would be lost and without purpose. I really like a quote I found recently, from Anais Nin, a French author: “dreams are necessary to life.” I have plenty of dreams and I know I’ll have plenty more, but for now I feel incredibly lucky to be so close to living one of them. It’s also a very humbling experience; I had to put a lot of work in to make this dream come true and I had a lot of help along the way. I feel like I can never thank my parents, my professors, or my friends enough, for reading countless drafts of application essays, for talking to me about what I really wanted out of a study abroad experience, for giving me as many letters of recommendations as I asked for, without a second thought. I have thanked them all in person many times, but somehow that’s never seemed sufficient to me. So, if you helped me on this journey to living my dream of studying abroad I will say it once again: thank you. I greatly appreciate everything you have done for me and the only way I can think to thank you any more is to let you read this and hope that through reading it, you’ll live my dream too. But your dreams are not my dreams and my dreams are not your dreams. They never will be. Yet dreams can be shared. They will not mean the same thing to everyone (they can’t!), but they can —and should! — be shared with those you care about. The people you care about (and who care about you) can support you along your journey, through the rough patches, through the smooth sailing; they can comfort you when things don’t go exactly right and rejoice with you when you reach your goal. Dreams are meant to be shared. If you don’t share them, I don’t think you can ever hope to fully achieve them or truly enjoy them.

And so as I begin to live one of my dreams, I wanted to take a moment to stop and think about the people, near and far, who have helped me on this path to studying abroad, who have believed in me even as I stressed out and was convinced I’d never be accepted to the ACM program, and who are now just as excited as I am. I love each and every one of you in very different, very special ways and I am so blessed to have you in my life. Now go live your dreams. If you share them with me, I will support you the whole way there, just as you have supported me. Remember, dreams are necessary to life.