Editor’s note: This essay is the third in a series of essays by local students about how they’re preparing for their futures and finding challenges and joy in the process. Learn more about these students and get updates at st.news/studentvoices2024.
Click. Academics. Click. Majors & Minors. Business Administration? Comp Sci? Biology? What about the implications of that degree?
Entering the second half of high school in Bellevue, I had to do some soul-searching about my future. Like many of my peers, I felt I had to narrow down my aspirations.
Thankfully, I already had an idea. At 9, I was an alchemist, grinding together a concoction of plants and flowers in my backyard into herbal pastes. A few years later, I enthusiastically peeled back muscle tissue during a pig heart dissection, though I did lose my appetite at dinner that night staring at my mom’s mapo doufu. Now in high school, I closely inspected my petri dish, expecting the cells floating in pink goo to show some sign of movement.
Soon, I’d be a surgeon, boasting sweat-stained scrubs, informing the family that the hourslong operation was a success. Or maybe an oncologist in a well-fitting white coat, carrying on a casual, comfortable conversation with a patient connected to bags of red chemotherapy fluids.
Eager to confirm my vision, I took the next logical step: volunteering at a nearby hospital.
The first time I walked into a hospital room, a man with wispy white hair stared blankly at me. After several excruciating moments of me returning an equally blank gaze, the silence was broken by his incoherent mumble. I promptly turned and left the room.
I had attempted to start a casual conversation about the weather. I must’ve spoken too quickly and too quietly because there was no reply. After the awkward encounter, I left again in burning embarrassment and retreated to the haven of the nurse’s desk for the rest of the shift.
I knocked on the door and entered a new room that was nearly pitch-dark. A woman with round glasses was illuminated only by a reading light attached to her bed. I wouldn’t make the mistake of speaking too quietly this time. My near-shouting made her eyes dart up from her book.
We exchanged pleasantries, and I struck up a conversation about what she was reading. I dashed out to get a recently started book to show her. To our shared delight, “The Song of Achilles” I had in my hand and the “Circe” she was midway through were both by Madeline Miller. We shared the Friday night reading our books side by side.
With reestablished confidence, I continued to enter new rooms. In one, I found more shared tastes in literature. In another, I watched the medical team’s continued patience and compassion as a neurological injury caused a man to be violent and irate. The many Saturday and Friday nights I spent in the hospital quickly changed my perception of medicine. It was no longer a perfect and simple profession but a fascinating one, nonetheless.
Soon, another change in perspective came, not from a challenging class or a formal research project but instead from a dilapidated fence at Kelsey Creek Farm.
With no prior experience, I dived head-on into designing and building a new 107-foot-long fence and retaining wall for my Eagle Scout Service Project.
I scoured house building forums to grasp sound design philosophies and appropriate materials. Consulting experienced builders, I nodded along to their jargon, making notes to decrypt the words later. Soon enough, my notebook pages overflowed with terms like “plumb,” “backfill” and “deadman.”
Despite the meticulous plans I drew out, real life had far more challenges than neat blue boxes of graph paper. I mastered the art of improvisation: thinking on my feet and solving problems that thorough planning couldn’t predict. When I ran out of lag bolts, I instructed my team of volunteers to continue with temporary deck screws while orchestrating a last-minute run to Home Depot.
With these experiences, my goals become clearer than ever: continue to lead, build and serve. Although a simple fence and my contributions as a high school volunteer may not impact millions, the resourcefulness, adaptability and never-ending pursuit of knowledge I developed have the potential to do so.
That’s not to say volunteering at the hospital completely made me disinterested in medicine and building a fence kindled a hidden passion for construction. Instead, I found a deeper, more complex appreciation for both.
Looking ahead, I can’t wait to pursue an education and a career that never settles. I have a few more experiences to look forward to: a job at a boating company over the summer and an engineering practicum in the fall. I wonder what they’ll be like.
While having a concise idea in mind was a great place to start, keeping an open mind has given me a sense of self-confidence. Paradoxically, the more I explore without a goal in mind, the clearer my purpose in life becomes.