Keep always your end in mind.

By: Neysa Herrera Cuello.

I have always had the desire to leave Colombia and inmerse myself into a whole new experience named world. Since I was I child, of maybe 13 years old, I had this relentless desire to become a lawyer, one of the better ones from Harvard.

By the time of my last year of high school, while a lot of my classmates and friends didn’t know what they were going to do with their lives, I thought I had everything figured out.  I got three things clear: I loved reading and writing I didn’t want to be related with math, I wouldn’t be a doctor as my mom wanted and, I wanted to be a lawyer. Even though I knew I wouldn’t study my major in Harvard because I wasn’t ready to leave my parents and Colombia yet, I knew I would do my masters in International Law there.

When it came time to fill the application for the University of Cartagena, I was sitting in front my computer stuck on this question: what major are you applying for? I didn’t know what to answer. When the list of majors deployed for me to choose one, I had this strange feeling and I couldn’t stop looking the Social Communication option. I was in a dilemma between law (my chosen major since I was a child) and Communication (an option that just came up). How could it be possible? I asked my mother who was standing next to me what were her thoughts about Communication and what if I’d take that major. She said: “It is you decision; nobody will carry the weight of a career but you. So, you decide how light or heavy you want it to be”. Those words have echoed in my head until today. It is my motto.

I remember how nervous I felt that day. My arms were literally shaking. I couldn’t stop thinking that I would die of hunger as a communicator; I would be unemployed, living with my parents my entire life, and, if I was lucky, I’d get a job where I ‘d earn just enough to survive. That day when I talk to my dad by phone I had to explain my unexpected decision. But how could I explain it if I didn’t understand it, either. I could say it was a gut feeling.  However, the hardest thing was about to come. When my friends got the news, they started judging my decision. Some of them said “How could it be possible that a girl as smart as you are would have chosen Social Communication. What a waste!” Some people who were a little bit nicer asked: “So you want to be a Barbie talking and buzzing about others people life in TV?” -I respect people that play that role, but that was definitely not what I wanted to be.

I have been listening this sort of thing along this five years of my undergraduate program. But since my first day of classes I just loved it! I love Communication, I love every single thing that I learn about it. I don’t care about people judging about it, anymore. I believe that every person can decide what path should take to achieve what they want. I wanted to influence other’s people life in some way, I wanted to have a voice to change aspects that I want to change in my hometown, in society, or in a company that I work with. Communication gives me that voice, that power to change things. I don’t picture myself in any other different major.

At this time, I have left Colombia to live new experiences and challenges just like I wanted to. I am not in Harvard studying law. I love where I am at this point: doing an internship in Communications at Purdue University, learning what I am passionate of, meeting new people, preparing myself for applying to get a job in Strategic Communications and overall, being an adult, far from my parents and family. So, I would say that you don’t need to plan your life like an agenda. Let everything to take place at the right moment but also, have where you want to end in mind and how you will reach it. That doesn’t make you a ship drifting into which the wind drags in different directions.