Time has Passed

During my time in Asia I grew to view the world, myself and the problems that plague our society in a whole new light.
Though I worked hard, spending hours at the orphanage in Shangri La, building a new school in Cambodia, and teaching in Yongshuo I also had a lot of excess time to contemplate what I hoped to achieve from my journey and life in general.

I struggled for my entire trip with the question “How can I change the world?” In Shangri La, I sat in a café for hours reading the books I brought from home, frantically scribbling my thoughts on paper, and drinking milk tea. I felt I was making progress, that my thoughts would blaze new trails for humanitarian efforts, and change the world forever. But at the end of the day I had nothing more than a bad headache and two notebooks full of indecipherable scribbles.

When renewing my visa in Hong Kong, I met with a big businessman who was a friend of the executive director of Global Roots. In our meeting he told me that “To make change in the world, people need to listen to you and to do that they need to respect you. Before you can make an impact, you have to be successful.” My ideas were not unique. People have been talking about “happiness for all” and “world peace” for as long as the written word has existed. For my ideas to matter, I had to matter.

I took a year off after high school because I wanted to see what I could do, without school, or any form of support. If I could help people without an education, then why waste my time and money in a classroom? I now know, in the bottom of my heart, that college is where I need to be. I need to be stimulated and forced outside of my comfort zone. I want to learn and succeed more than almost anything in the world. I say ‘almost’ because the things I want most in the world have been said for generations. I hope to be one of the voices that lead my generation to realizing those goals.