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<\/a><\/p>\nLiving with children in a Guatemalan orphanage.\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
My parents always told me and my siblings we had won the lottery. We were born into a good family, a stable country, and were all very healthy. When I was younger it did not really register with me at the time how unbelievably lucky I was to have a bed to sleep in, a roof over my head, and every meal handed to me. My parents worked incredibly hard every day to provide us with comfortability and privilege. I would never have realized how lucky I was if I did not see others around me who had a clear disadvantage; I met a lot of people who were simply dealt a bad hand in life. I began to help these individuals, and one by one they began to transform my life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Helping others soon became my passion and my mother and father are a large reason I never let this passion die. My dad is the underdog in this story. He showed me that through hard work and determination, you can achieve great things if you are willing to take the risks. My mother is my greatest role model and taught me never to take no for an answer and to demand what I believe I deserve. She can make anything happen, and I mean anything.<\/i>\u00a0For her, the words “can’t” and “wont” do not exist in her vocabulary and they rarely come up in mine. Overtime as my passion for helping others grew, I\u00a0set goals for myself along the way and have never given up on them.<\/p>\n Embarking on a difficult climb in northern California.\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n In 2008 I visited India for the first time.\u00a0My parents took me and my siblings on this trip to show us reality and it hit hard. We spent some days in Delhi and took a long drive to Agra. Over the course of our travel I saw things I never knew existed, things I believed should not exist. Kids as young as 6 years old working as beggars, the injured and sick lying on the road and homes, made out of tarps, stacked up and exposed to the world. But what I was struck with was what became a reoccurring theme in my life – the impoverished and disadvantaged are some of the happiest and kindest people I have ever met in my life. This was true in working with disabled kids and became more evident traveling throughout India. In 2008, after returning from India, I promised myself I would return to help. Between then and now I have travelled to Guatemala, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, and Nepal. The evident lack of resources in these countries is always difficult to\u00a0accept, but at this point in my life, I refuse to accept the fact that is the way things are.<\/p>\n Locally, I began to help change the problems I experienced first hand. When I was growing up, I unreasonably believed men were simply better at math and sciences. My mother is the one who helped me break down this barrier. No matter how much I protested doing math homework or insisted I would never be an engineer, my mother was patient and convincing. She worked with me night after night on math homework until I reached a point where I realized I was good at math, anybody could be good at math. I give my mother a lot of credit for where I am today as one of the few female Computer Engineers at Santa Clara University. As I grew older I found that many young women today feel similar to what I felt in the early years of my life.\u00a0If there is anything I learned from both my mother and older sister, its that standards or stereotypes society sets for us can easily be torn down. I found a position as a math tutor in high school and also continued to be one through college. My goal was to encourage many young women around me that they, like anybody else, could perfect their skills with hard work and effort.<\/span><\/p>\n Myself, my mother, and my sister.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Over the years I have a developed a deeply profound love for others. Whether I encounter individuals briefly on a public bus, or strike up an intellectual conversation with them in a coffee shop, I feel connected to their lives, their experiences, their struggles and success. At some moment in my life, the passion to help others was ignited and it has been a raging fire ever since. Coming into college I knew I wanted to make a difference in the world. Though travel and volunteer work I saw many individuals who were fighting the odds against them and I wanted to help the fight. Before I began college it became clear that the world was converging around the technology sector. Change was happening faster than ever thanks to\u00a0<\/span>the Internet. I chose to major in Computer Science and Engineering because I believe it has the ability to help make the greatest impact on the world.<\/span><\/p>\n It was not long before I became frustrated with my situation in school. I saw a lot of young intelligent students with no motivation – their skills could change the world and none of them even seemed to realize this fact. Suddenly I realized I was not so different, I was working so hard to achieve good grades that I \u00a0let other passions such as volunteering fall far behind.\u00a0For me, this didn\u2019t sit well.<\/p>\n When I was growing up my parents had moved us around a lot. At the time it was not easy and today I could not be more thankful for it. Through this process I became adaptable. Adaptable to new beginnings, new people, and new settings. I learned to adjust to different school systems and most of all it taught me to be able to make the best out of a uncomfortable and sometimes stressful situation. Because of this, I became very self motivated to mold the situation around me and not let it mold me. At some point you have to stop relying on others – not everyone is going to help you out. Drawing from these experiences of change, I began to follow my intentions and not those of others. If I wanted to focus on helping others and using my technical skills for social good instead, then who was going to stop me? Suddenly my world changed and I realized there were no limits on what I wanted to achieve or how and when I wanted to do so.<\/p>\n So I began to balance school will my love for others. I received an internship with a local social enterprise that helps connect users with immediately accessible volunteer opportunities through the use of social networking. On the side, I help teach\u00a0english to immigrants and\u00a0work with animals at the Humane Society of Silicon Valley. My empathy for other humans and animals is alive more than ever today.<\/p>\n Elephant conservation center in Thailand.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Enjoying the company of dogs while trekking in Nepal.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n There is an undeniable gravitational pull I have towards humanity. My intent is to further join my technical skills with my passion for helping others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At 12 years old I began to spend most of my time around some of the most disadvantage members of our society. In middle school, I forgot about recess, about lunch and study hours \u2014 the only place I wanted to be in my free time was in the multi handicap room at my school. … Continue reading There is Beauty in the Struggle<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-impact"],"gutentor_comment":0,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"crohacz","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/author\/crohacz\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"Social Impact<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"At 12 years old I began to spend most of my time around some of the most disadvantage members of our society. In middle school, I forgot about recess, about lunch and study hours \u2014 the only place I wanted to be in my free time was in the multi handicap room at my school.…","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/crohacz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n