Undergraduate /
Sociology - uc prompt ; never came to my mind when I was juggling through majors [4]
I
first stumbled upon the subject when I started taking general education classes at a junior
level college. My interest in it grew when I took my first Sociology class. I remember having the preconceived notion that it was going to be a waste of time. When I first saw my teacher, I immediately assumed that the class would contain nothing but boring lectures and essays to write. However, my opinion immediately changed as soon as he opened his mouth. He made me think about how each and every act that we do is a stepping-stone for someone else in the future.
"We were making the future and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making. And here it is! If we don't end war, war will end us." This quote from the sociologist H.G. Wells inspired me the most. Even though it might seem a bit cliché, at the time I read it, its message just came jumping out at me. From that point on, my life at school changed completely.
I had been a part of student body now for about a year and obtained a lot from the experience. A lot of it had to do with Care Bank--one of the committees I was representing. We would give out free bus passes and gift cards to grocery stores for use by underprivileged students. I would conduct interviews with the students and was able to see a lot of different cases. One student in particular caught my eye. He was a minority and was born into drug and money laundering--but he decided to change his life for the better by educating himself. This made me think about how our society works as a whole and if we keep on making the same mistakes in life we don't hold anything in our future. If I can help a kid like this succeed in school, then sociology is my path. I knew that I could do what Care Bank does but on a much larger scale. H.G. Wells' quote kept floating through my mind when I was interviewing the kid. If this kid could keep himself from harming others, then the world would have a lot less suffering.
So then, I thought of something I could do to help students in his situation: Along with my pre-requisites studies for pharmacy school, I would also like to do some research on underprivileged children. The saying "the children are our future" best fits my goal in my educational career. My family background comes from a country with a lot of uneducated people who make very little money due to the lack of education in their society. Helping
spread education(?) on a more global level would be my goal in my research.
After making that decision, it was a struggle for me to explain it to my family. All throughout my life, my family and I had the dream of me wearing the white lab coat and helping a person with my cold stethoscope. At first, it seemed like a big jump from planning to major in chemistry for pharmaceutical school to majoring in sociology. However, when my parents saw how much I was enjoying my new major, they knew that it was the best decision for me and gave me their full support. Having my family back me up on this decision made it a whole lot easier to motivate myself to work even harder.
I don't think that I would be in this situation if I hadn't done student body and taken my inspirational sociology class.
(These last two lines seem a bit unnecessary...)
Having three older brothers also helped steering me in the right direction. Being able to learn from their mistakes has helped a lot in making my lifelong decisions.
(Ah...well, I edited out some parts I thought didn't fit--hope it helps!)
