Most of us spend our pre-college lives dreaming about the day when we leave for college and start what is said to be, "the time of our lives". We enter college with high expectations of what the future holds, with the prospect of redefining who we are and a yearning for much needed independence. While each person has their own set of predetermined plans and goals for what college will hold, it's easy to get sucked into a rut of mindless partying or a mundane schedule.
College is a time about learning your likes and dislikes, getting out of your comfort zone and really finding your passions. Being young and growing as a person is the perfect time to dedicate yourself to doing things that you have never tried and are curious about. It's hard to truly push yourself, especially when it is so easy to stay in your own little bubble.
In case you wanted to know what I look like.My name is Kassidy McDonald, I am an Arizona native born and raised. I have a passion for travel, Spanish and eating pazookies. When I was sixteen, I traveled to the Dominican Republic for two months with an organization called Amigos de las Americas and there I lived with a host family, took bucket baths, learned meringue and was one of the only two Americans in a village of 2,000 Spanish speaking Dominicans.
This experience is what sparked my lust for travel and Spanish. Through journaling my experiences there, I realized that I wanted to become an international correspondent. The whole experience taught me how I underestimated myself and that truly I can do anything I set my mind to and it taught me how trying new things can change your life. Since then, I haven’t taken any huge risks that have challenged my prospective of living and new ideas. I would love to have the funds to travel, study abroad and experience new cultures but haven’t really put forth the effort to do anything about it.
Volunteering in the Dominican Republic.While brainstorming topics for my blog I realized, maybe I don’t need to be overseas to truly get out of my comfort zone? I have a long-term bucket list of things that include a myriad of goals for what I want to accomplish in my lifetime, most of which include international travel and an obscene amount of funding. I began to consider making a short-term bucket list, one with goals that I can accomplish as a poor girl in college. I want to still push myself and experience new things while not going broke.
While this list will just be a “drop in the bucket” of my long-term goals, I hope to get new perspective and experience one check mark at a time. Each week I will complete two items off my bucket list, blog about my experience and what I learned from it.
Reach the columnist at kassidylee01@gmail.com or on Twitter @kassmcdonald.
