The Years That Changed Me

Hello and thank you for inviting me to your class. My name is Yongchan and currently I am the President and founder of an organization aimed to help children who are in need. My organization is called Lending Hand. I came here to your class to share with you my life that led me to where I am today.

All of the decisions that had led me to my career, started off during my first year of High School. At Punahou School, I was new and anxious. Everything was new, the schedules, the classes, the classmates, and most of all the work. The first thing I thought once I got into Punahou School was to use the resources wisely and to get into the best college I could. According to my parents during my freshmen year, I was supposed to make sure their money didn’t go to waste and to get into a well-known college. This idea was dropped as I started to concentrate to fit in with the new types of friends and the new school life. My social life basically took over my academic life. Grades were the least of my worries in the first few month of my freshmen year.

I had no idea on what to become in life and what kind of job I wanted to have. However, the biggest change in my life happened when I took a trip to Nigeria in Africa. As a family trip, my family went sight seeing all of the different things there. During our stay in Nigeria, it was very obvious that the children there were mostly uneducated and in need of help. The lack of hospitals and medical care was apparent. Through this environment I have realized how little I was wasting my life and the amount of advantages I had.

When I returned from my trip, I changed dramatically. I wanted to help out other people in need. It came to me how I living such a leisurely life, while kids not only across the world, but also in Hawaii were struggling to get the best of what they had. That thought gave me an ideal interest in helping the needy. I started joining clubs, small organizations, and made donations to anything that would help out the struggling people.

Later on in my High School years, I gradually narrowed down my interest to helping uneducated, needy, abandoned children. It was evident that when I left for college, I would want to start my own organization and group aimed towards helping these kinds of children. So I went into studying business, humane studies, and environmental issues. I graduated from Punahou School and went through the University of Pennsylvania. I started to meet people who had the same philosophy about people in need, and we congregated and persuade tycoons to invest in the organization that I founded (what is the group called and was it only you? Why did you even say you met people who had the same goals as you? Did they not play a part in the foundation?).

Not only had my actions changed, but also my dreams and life goals changed. As a 9th grader, I had my own dream house that I would want to live in one day. I imagined a picturesque home with a beach-front and other extravaganzas. However, that has changed, for I knew that with a standard home I could provide more homes for children who don't even have a roof over their heads.

Even thought I haven't been able to live in luxury, it feels great that children are able to have a better life through my work and dreams. Throughout my life of "fitting-in" in 9th grade, I found out that fitting in was miniscule. It was that I realized how fortunate I was just to be able to come to Punahou School. Being able to give children a new start in life gave me satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment, and still does to this day.