Hawks celebrate accomplishments already reached, work towards future goals
Owning a business. Working as a doctor for newborn babies. Climbing Mount Everest. These are all things senior Hawks aspire to do. Others celebrate accomplishments they’ve made already in high school: winning awards for sports, getting good grades, or making long-lasting friendships.
Sometimes people find inspiration in unlikely places. For senior Barbara Pena, she found it in the NICU, or neonatal intensive care unit, when her baby sister was born. She was inspired to become a neonatal doctor.
“I discovered another ‘world’ in the NICU, where not only the babies within the unit need help, but the families of the patients are in need of that support more than anything.”
Barbara Pena
The NICU is a place where babies who were born prematurely or with complications can get treatment. They might have issues with their heart or lungs, and they may need surgery to help them breathe.
“There’s a lot of sadness to it, but there’s also a lot of happiness to it whenever as a family you get to experience the achievement of going out of there, because most people don’t, which is sad. But, for me, it was like more than happy, because you don’t know whether you’re going to stay there for a long time or if there going to make it. But in my case, thank God, we were able to experience [getting out],” Pena said.
Senior Victoria Garcia has already accomplished a big goal and is on her way to owning a business. She works as a lash technician from her house after school.
“My favorite part of doing everything is just talking to the girls and they just start to be your friends. So then it’s not even just lashing and making them feel pretty, it’s about giving girls confidence. That’s the best part.”
Victoria Garcia
Garcia learned and got her certifications from a lash tech she went to. She is now going on to teach more girls about being a lash tech.
“She taught me, just a couple courses, like a safety course, just a few courses you have to go through [to learn about] the lash growth cycle and all that type of stuff, and then there’s a bunch of legal things you have to learn,” Garcia said.
Jared Gregory has an ambitious goal of climbing Mount Everest. He used to go hiking with his parents and says he wants to do that again after high school.
“I’d want to go to Mount Everest because not a lot of people have been there, so I feel like it’s something I’ll be able to see that not a lot of people have. And also to explore the world, because that’s one of my dreams, is to see the world, and just see what it has to offer, and all the people, all the cultures and all that,” Gregory said.
People need a strategy to reach their goals. While some goals need extensive training or schooling, Gregory says to reach his goal of climbing Mount Everest he just needs to get out into the world.
“Just don’t let anybody stop you, especially don’t let yourself stop you, cause that’s probably even a bigger problem, because that could be for your whole life. You could be an old man or woman and then regret everything you did in your life because you never did anything you wanted to do.”
