Saying 'Yes!' to opportunities as they come to you

If you’ve known me for any long period of time, you’ll know that I can’t sit still. That’s not just a product of the ever-active mind of minethat refuses to slow down or opt for a rest, and instead applies as well to the manner in which I live my life at large. As an example of this, I want to spend this week’s column discussing opportunities—the impact that taking a chance can have on those of us who share in this sense of restlessness and wanderlust.

I look back on the many experiences I’ve garnered throughout my 19 years of life as a series of particularly fortunate coincidences that all happened to coalesce into something marvelous. I see it less as a résumé and more as an interwoven tapestry of opportunities granted and then taken—a patchwork of involvements and encounters, none of which exist without relying upon those others that have come before.

This is all particularly fresh on my mind as a number of new opportunities have come to play in my life. This winter, after Christmas, I’ll be heading back to Malaysia for three weeks, my first time back in nearly two years. I’ll be there to visit my host family, my friends, all of the people I was fortunate enough to share a connection with during my exchange. I’m beyond excited, yes, but I’m also a bit nervous: I’m rusty, my Malay isn’t as good as it used to be. How can I, as the disorganized person I am, make the most of my three weeks there? What if it doesn’t feel the same as it did two years ago? Long story short, this is going to be a lovely opportunity for me to step outside of my comfort zone once more.

In addition to my return to Malaysia, there are two other programs that have been weighing heavily upon my mind: one, a highly competitive course-embedded travel class offered by Grinnell next semester, and two, another Department of State-sponsored exchange (like my program in high school), this time over the summer and with an express focus on language. For the former, I’ve already run the gamut of application processes, and accordingly have now received word of my selection. What that means for me is that this BIO-195 course will be the sole focus of my spring break, where we’ll spend two weeks in South Africa’s Kruger National Park learning, hands-on, about New and Emerging Infectious Diseases (the title of the course). It also means that immediately following the end of the spring semester, I’ll be heading to Alaska for a week to study the impacts of climate change.

To be honest, taking this new element of my spring semester into account has been hard to fathom. I like the fact that I can’t necessarily wrap my mind around the opportunities soon to come, and it reminds me of the way I felt leading up to my exchange, unsure of the impacts such an experience would have upon me or my worldviews. Even more similar to my exchange, as mentioned earlier, is the Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship I’m currently applying for, where, if all goes well, I’ll be studying Arabic in Jordan for almost the entirety of this coming summer. Again, it’s an experience that I feel great excitement, anticipation, and the typical application anxiety toward—something I can write essays upon essays about without ever scratching the surface of the impacts I know a program like this will cultivate.

As a thesis to this disjointed column, and to connect my ideas expressed herein, I simply wish to establish a living example of the benefits that can be reaped by saying “Yes!” to opportunities as they come to you—searching out, and working hard to earn such experiences when they aren’t so easily granted.

As a call to action for all those young folks looking to make a difference in the world (and old folks as well), it’s a matter, I’ve found, of using your interests and your opportunities to your advantage. Be proactive and always in search of ways to stitch together new sets of experiences. Set your sights, and with the right dedication, the world can be yours for the changing.