Hello Everyone! My name is Natalie Obregon. As a disclaimer, Class of 2012 HGHS was and will indeed always be the best. No doubt. Now, let’s get to the good stuff.
As of right now, I am in my third year of college at the University of Florida. I am studying Animal Science and I am currently on the Pre-Vet track (subject to change, but still same field). I LOVE animals. Obviously. But as I have come to find out about myself here in college is that I love animals AND people together. So that has opened up my heart and my mind to endless opportunities in my college experience.
Let me start of by answering some questions for prospective college students (which should be all of you): yes, it most definitely is okay to have multiple passions. Yes, it’s okay to be confused about what you want to amount to in your life. And it definitely IS okay to be a little (or very!) lost and confused upon getting to college. If you don’t feel overwhelmed as soon as you get to college then either you have it made or you’re not doing college right. Let’s be real, the second case is probably the real one.
I want you to understand that I really mean the aforementioned things. You get to college and truth may be, you don’t know where you belong. All I can say is, give it time and take opportunities given to you. That’s it. It’s that cliché and simple, trust me.
Leaving my home in Hialeah to move to Gainesville for college was written in the stars for me, I just know it. I think to how different my life could have been even now if I would have lived with my parents just a little bit more time and spent just a little longer under their roof. But coming to college, it really hit home (no pun intended) how much growing up sucks and just how fantastic it is all at once. Freedom is something we all yearn for. Some maybe more than others (me included), but we all thrive on the idea of following our dreams. And we should feed into that passion.
Looking back at these past three summers and the semesters in between at UF, man oh man have I been challenged. Academically, physically and most definitely emotionally. And guess what? I don’t regret a single thing and I wouldn’t take back a single day. I was so damn close to going back to South Florida when I realized that I might have to pay for my education through loans and that was so hard for me. Most of us on this blog know what it’s like to face financial hardships. We know it because we’ve grown up seeing our guardians, our incredible parental figures juggling putting us through grade school and sending us to college to become “The Future” along with working like dogs day in and day out. Long story short, I stayed at UF and was granted the scholarship that made me believe that things do happen for a reason. That I was meant to be there, experience crappy dorms and stale meal plan foods and bad and awesome roommates with no experience with Latinas. A First Generation student, like me, could not give up the dream of going to such an incredible academic institution.
Because of this scholarship that I earned through my academic achievements and the Hispanic background that I am incredibly proud to have, I have been granted the opportunity to grow here in college. Just this Spring Break I traveled to Nicaragua with a group of incredibly altruistic and compassionate girls on a Marine Conservation Trip through an organization I found out about on campus. I had gone to Nicaragua before to visit family but I had never seen it like this. And they were taken back by the way that some families lived so poorly, below their means. Needless to say, gratification overcame them and me on this amazing trip we were so fortunate to take.
Like these wonderful ladies I met through this trip, I have met fantastic, lifetime friends because I took the risk to put myself out there and meet others different from me. Hence why college is so great!
High school was a little bit like the nagging our parents give us for years, about things that we just can’t understand and advice we just cannot grasp because we haven’t gone through hardships that test our character. College and growing up is the wise Grandma that knows better than to say “I told you so.” Even though she told you so.
What I am trying to say is, expect to be incredibly shocked some days when your 6.7 GPA (is that even possible?) in high school seems like a joke when you take a class in college and realize that your exams aren’t as straightforward as you remembered them being. Failure is expected. Failure is good. Trust me. And whatever you do, you don’t give up on your dreams. You owe it to yourself, just like I owed it to myself to flourish.
Keep that chin up, kid.
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