Most people think about their future and their plans, and how they are going to achieve them. Worrying about the future is a common trait that many people have. Personally, I have gotten really worried about my future because it is sort of a mystery. Therefore, I have tried to keep a list of my goals to easily track them. Despite the difficulty of anticipating the future, my objectives are to finalize school, pass my life experience to assist Africa’s poor communities, and explore more new cultures.

I have been in school for a very long time, which will not stop until I get my Ph.D. First of all, in order to achieve that goal, I have needed to learn English language, so I enrolled at CELOP for four semesters, which had helped me a lot to improve my English into a level of proficiency. Secondly, next semester will be my first step toward the Doctorate of Physical Therapy degree. I got admission at Loma Linda University, which is an exemplary-medical school in the US. I believe that the Doctorate in Physical Therapy program at Loma Linda University is the one that will provide me with the theoretical and practical skills to fulfill my responsibilities and desire. I feel that the curriculum offers unique opportunities throughout the 3 years, with a balanced focus on all branches of physical therapy, which is what I particularly need. Joining the DPT program and working with the highly trained faculty will give me the necessary tools to develop my skills, enhance my knowledge, and provide me a special opportunity to reach my long-term goals.

Secondly, since I was a child I have dreamed to assist poor people in Africa. I have always loved what Gandhi said, “be the change you want to see in the world.” Therefore, helping others and providing them with their needs especially in terms of health is a crucial element. That action will definitely change their lives to better ones, and let me experience new things such as volunteer work, which I have been hoping of. It might be difficult to achieve that dream, but I have been working to realize it for a very long time. My plans are after I graduate from the school of physical therapy, and work for four years, I will travel to Somalia to provide victims of the civil war with some physical therapy care, which might relieve their privation. I have read that there are so many people who lost their limbs or got nerve injuries, but they are very poor and not capable of sustaining the expenses of their treatment, so physical therapy is the appropriate relief they can receive. Additionally, Somalia’s government is still unable to take the responsibility for the provision of health care. Therefore, my goal is a good reason to attempt to help those people and show them that the world is still thinking about them and wants to assist.

Finally, travelling and exploring the world is also one of my dreams. Finding out about other cultures will expand my prospective, educate myself, and also pass my knowledge on to others. Personally, I have added Japan to my bucket list. I am planning to travel to that place to find out about the locals, food, nature, and the pace of life. I have learnt that the life in Japan is very fast, so I want to see how much faster it is compared to the US; I cannot imagine how it will look like. Furthermore, Japanese food is one of my favorite foods, especially sushi, so I will get the chance to try a fresh sushi dish in local restaurants. Additionally, I will be able to meet some of my friends that I have known here in the US. when I was studying English. I am sure Japan is completely different from what I have witnessed in the US, and in the Middle East.

To conclude, predicting my future is a sort of mystery. I cannot guarantee that I will do all I have written on my bucket list, but at least I am working very hard to achieve the most important three items, which is finishing school, go to Somalia to help, and travel to Japan to enjoy my life. I hope I will read this article in seven or eight years from now after I had realized all of these three goals. I am sure it will be a good feeling of accomplishment.

by Miguel Angel Martinez Porras

People go through different conflicts and although it seems strange, I take those conflicts as a personal learning experience.  I grew up in a small neighborhood in Venezuela, where I lived for about 10 years. Later, I decided to spend the rest my life with my father, and that is where I learned my English. My future is not yet deciphered, although I do have an idea of what I’m going to do.

First, even though my family is in Venezuela, I still have a desire to live in the US. This was part of my plan because, after a wonderful summer at a marine military high school, I decided to stay here in the U.S. As a repercussion, my decision had a bigger impact on my future.

Ever since I was a kid, my dream job was always constructed upon my grandfather’s dreams. However, I was nursed upon my father’s perspective and his perspective helped me believe there were other jobs that I could do. Therefore I was lead to believe that any job was possible. So I decided that the best path for me was business.

Furthermore, I needed to develop my skills in preparation for my future. To address this issue I have to confront the reality that my GPA is not perfect; that is why I have to receive a considerably good grade on the TOEFL & the SAT exams. In fact, that is why I’m at CELOP, to further develop myself.

In the near future involving family matters I believe that I need a good career involving the stock market or different corporation management. In addition to my career goals and after a few years of dating, I will finally make a decision of who to choose for a wife. In conclusion, I am fascinated over how many different trials I will go through to finally find success.

Everyone has a dream about the future. For me, I like to make plans for my future. Last year I graduated from my university in China. Then I came to the U.S. to order to finish my study plans. When I pass the TOFEL test, I will study for my master degree in Boston University. Then I will accomplish my future plans.

In China we have an old saying: people should do the right thing that is suitable for their age. For example, when I become an adult, my actions and thinking shouldn’t be childlike, still depending on my parents. I will get my masters degree and find a job and achieve economic independence. During the time that I study, I will find a part-time job to increase my work experience and make more friends. At the same time, I will study Spanish as a new language. On weekends I will attend some volunteer activities to help the people who need help. Traveling around the world is my dream. While on vacation, I will make time to travel to different countries, because I don’t want to waste vacation in my student life. I believe that the student life is the best time to travel before you go to work without a lot of pressures from life. However, traveling around the world is a long-term plans. I will save money and plan to travel twice a year. Life is short, so I will give myself more time to enjoy life.

About my future career, I hope I can find a job in media, which I really like to do. I know that I will encounter a lot challenges, but I will work hard and do my best for my work. I will make plans for my career life and get more experience form my job. Then I hope I can have my own company and an art school.

In addition, health is the most important thing. I need to keep going to the gym and swimming, it can really help me to keep healthy and sports can make me younger. In the end, I hope I will find the right guy to marry, have babies, and have a family.

In the end, I hope I can take more time with my family and my friends. They will make my life more colorful and interesting. Be a loving person, and enjoy life, those are my life goals.

Graduating from high school was one of the hardest things that I have ever faced, not because of my grades, but because I lost myself when I graduated. I realized that I know nothing about myself such as my hobbies, the things that I like, and what I am going to major in. Although I don't know much about my future plans, I decideed that it will depend on four things: university, major, career, and marriage.

First of all, University is a crucial thing that can turn your whole life upside-down either for good or for bad. I think studying in one of the highest ranked universities in my major is important to me because these universities usually will give you a better knowledge in your studies than other universities. Also, it will help you to build a powerful professional network in business or in science fields with people that studied with you.

Second, choosing the major is important because you will spend 4 years to study this major. For me, I am going to major in computer science because I like this major, and by entering it I can work as a freelancer, and this thing is good for me because I can work from my house or establish my own company. I do not want to work for a company for 30 years of my life.

Third, the career is something important to consider and I think about working in a company such as Google or Apple for a few years to gain experience, and to know what I should do to establish my company.

Fourth, marriage is one of the things that can change your life and how you see it. You need to plan for this thing to made the right decision. For me I will not get married until I establish my company because I need to focus either on my company or my wife. I cannot focus on both of them.

To summarize, people are different in their expectations and what they consider important for their future life; but talking about myself, I need to focus on choosing my university and major, then working for a few years and establishing my company. After that, I will think about marriage.

Is it possible to have an impeccable future without encountering rigorous obstacles? I am actually impressed and influenced by Paulo Coelho’s perspective about life, who states in the Alchemist that “when you want anything, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it”. I had a preset future till the age of twenty five when I decided to leave everything behind to pursue my education in the United States of America. My future plan chronologically involves pursuing my education, evolving my work experience, and developing or establishing a private business in my home country, Lebanon.

To start with, after graduating from the American University of Beirut and having a four year experience in engineering, I realized the necessity of pursing education to come up through the ranks more rapidly. With the competitive global market, an undergraduate degree in Engineering is no longer sufficient to be in executive positions in engineering companies; therefore, I took the decision to abandon everything in order to pursue my education in the United States of America. I began my journey of education at CELOP in Summer 2014 where I was able to enhance my English language due to the superb assistance from all the teachers who taught me at that time, namely Marsha Dean, Judith Dan, and Kathy Brenner. While working hard to enhance my GMAT score, I am planning to be admitted to a top notch university in Boston which I love despite its extremely cold weather. My plan encompasses pursuing a master degree in engineering and management which can offer me an opportunity to develop and enhance my capabilities in designing complex systems.

Attempting to deploy the skillsets that I will acquire from the master degree, I will strive to work in a management consulting firm. With plenty of opportunities to optimize the productivity of many companies in my region, I want to work in operations practice that is mainly focused at enhancing the work processes, optimization methods, and risk assessments. Moreover, since consultants acquire industries' best practices, working as a consultant may have a direct impact on various companies’ performance and productivity. With this in mind, I have a passion to perform some quantitative analysis in order to enhance the operational efficiency of companies dispersed around the world.

Even though my plan may look grandiose, I still plan at a late stage of my career to start up a new company with my brothers in Lebanon. Keeping this in mind since I was a child, I envisioned a preliminary idea of the new company’s logo, mission statement, and strategic plan. With the diverse working experience that we have as family members and with our resolute manner, I think in fifteen years we will succeed in developing a new company in Lebanon despite the political instability there.

In conclusion, I can’t anticipate at that stage how many obstacles or problems I may encounter during this long path. However, I am determined to try to accomplish these milestone in the best way possible. In the end, since this is my final writing at CELOP, and it may be published in the CELOP Sun, I want to thank all the teachers that taught me. In addition to the above mentioned teachers, I want to thank Imelda Stoffregen, Kim Perkins, and Diana Lynch who have definitely had a positive impact on my future. Moreover, I want to thank the admissions team, namely Katya Becker, Emily Taylor, Yasmina Tawil, William Marion, Elsie Seber, and Franklin Pesantez, who were so friendly, supportive, and helpful.

by Alanoud Alqahtani

Can I know what my future holds? The idea of knowing what my future holds for me is not tempting at all. People keep focusing on the future and what it promises, so they forget how to live in the present. For me, it is more important to focus on the current moment, to live in the present, and to enjoy it. However, I cannot go through life blindly. I need to understand what I want and need in order to know my destination. Consequently, I am planning to be a university professor. So I am here at CELOP, improving my English language skills, so I can apply for a graduate program in order to pursue my future goal.

When I started to think about what I wanted to be in the future I decided that I wanted to be a professor of Finance and Investments.  To achieve this goal I earned my bachelor's degree in Business Administration from the Economic and Business College at King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia. Afterward, I made a decision to go to graduate school abroad in order to earn my master's degree in Finance. I knew I would face so many obstacles but I did not care about that. I started to plan and conduct different research in the hope that I could find a good school in a good city in America. Now, I am here in Boston as what my teacher Diana would say "celoping". While I am enjoying my time at CELOP, I am also meeting different people from different nationalities and discovering the American educational system. I'm hoping one day that I will reach the required TOEFL score so I can go to the university of my choice. Then I will study hard to achieve my planned dream. However, I know I might make some mistakes or make some poor decisions, but I believe that everything is fixable if you have the ability and the strength to deal with whatever problem comes down your path.

In the end, I believe that I can do what I want to while enjoying my time and also while knowing that what John Green said, "The world is not a wish-granting factory," is true.  However, that will not keep me away from trying again and again after every time I fall down. I will never bother myself thinking of what is coming to me in the future. Nevertheless I will enjoy the small moments in the present and when the future comes I will deal with it then.

by Abdullah Alarifi

Each individual has future goals and he or she wants them to come true. Some achieved their goals and some didn’t because they thought it impossible. I have one question for the people who didn’t achieve their future goals, “why didn’t you try harder?” I have future goals too, and my future goals will result in success in my studies, and helping my city.

The first goal that I want to achieve is success in my studies. I think that learning and getting knowledge from experts is a great opportunity. For instance, when I was in middle school my science teacher always talked about scientists, what knowledge they left behind, and how they changed the universe. He also told us that we could have the same knowledge that scientists have and more by studying. That day, my teacher really inspired me, and he showed me how much I can learn and do by studying. Then, I decided to achieve the highest grades and succeed in my major, electrical engineering. Now, my scholarship gives me the opportunity to complete my bachelor’s degree for free and I will never let it go. I will study until I get enough knowledge and success, because then I can leave something valuable for people and the world, and they can remember me by it.

The second goal that I want to achieve is to help my city.  There are a lot of ways to help my city, and what I want to do is to start an organization that will provide a lot of volunteer work like cleaning public parks or streets. I also want to help poor people by raising some money from donations. I know that a lot of people in my country want to donate to help the poor and want to do volunteer work, but they need a trustworthy organization to donate to and to cooperate with.

Finally, as previously stated, everybody has future goals. Some achieve them and some think it is impossible. Moreover, succeeding in my studies and helping to build an organization that will help the city are the most important things I want to do in my future life or at least try to do.

by Ana Paula Pita

I consider myself to be a free bird. Ten minutes ago I didn’t know what to do with my life. I was lost in my own world without a course, but now I can tell you what I am going to do next.

Today I am finishing my summer semester at CELOP, which is the third and last one. I chose to take a gap year in my life to study English, and to be able to reach my goals. Studying outside of my home country is one of them, and if it is in a different language all the better. Just to face the things which are difficult and challenging, I am preparing for my TOEFL exam, which I have done before, but I did not achieve the score that my university required. I need to keep improving my English skills and achieve a good grade on my exams. When I finish the semester, I will go to my home, Spain, to visit my family and my friends just for one week. Therefore I am going to study a course of intensive English in Saint Michael College, Vermont. I will start this course in August until December. In the meantime, I am going to be applying to some universities to start this spring in the USA.

The second step of my goals will start with my acceptance letter in my hands and beginning studies of my major.

So far I would like to study Digital Art, but I am not 100% sure about that decision.

During my last two years I have changed my major more than 5 times.

Do I really want to study that? Will I be happy studying that? What if I am not good at that? Do I want to spend the rest of my life working on that? This is one of many tabs open in my mind.

In the next step I have no idea what I am going to do, so I am just going to leave it in the air, it is so far away. This is what my life looks like in the next five years. One of the most important things in life is to live in the present; the things that have happened you cannot change, and the ones that are going to come are not here yet, so don’t worry about them. Life is full of moments, so just create them.