{"id":17,"date":"2017-04-17T04:55:56","date_gmt":"2017-04-17T04:55:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/laurengoestouganda\/?p=17"},"modified":"2017-04-18T04:56:53","modified_gmt":"2017-04-18T04:56:53","slug":"a-little-bit-about-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/laurengoestouganda\/2017\/04\/17\/a-little-bit-about-me\/","title":{"rendered":"A little bit about me"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I’ll never forget where I am from–it is essential to remaining humble and evolving” -Frieda Pinto<\/em><\/p>\n

Growing up in the desert has its advantages and disadvantages. The greatest disadvantage being, of course, the hot, arid climate and a summer that seems to last for half the year. However, spending the first 14 years of my life in Phoenix, Arizona, nested in the heart Sonoran Desert, was one of my greatest blessings. First, being surrounded on all sides by a desert landscape taught me to find beauty in the most unlikely of places\u2014where others see a dusty, dry expanse, I see swaths of land dotted with saguaros, prickly pears, and other cacti that bloom with the most beautiful flowers every spring. I see the most brilliant orange, red and purple sunsets every evening, and listen for the rhythmic chirp of the cicadas throughout each summer night. Growing up in Phoenix taught me to seek out this beauty, and I have carried this skill with me always. More importantly, though, growing up in Phoenix allowed me to grow up just miles away from my grandparents.<\/p>\n

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Exploring near my home in Phoenix, circa 2002<\/p><\/div>\n

I would not be the person I am today without the influence of my grandparents throughout my formative years. Not only have my grandparents generously supported many of my endeavors, but they have also been two of my greatest role models. My earliest experiences volunteering were alongside my mother and grandmother, feeding the homeless at a local shelter. During these hours I spent volunteering, I witnessed my grandmother graciously serve others, with the kindest of eyes, simply because it was the right thing to do. She seemed to see no difference between serving strangers dinner at the shelter and serving my brother and I breakfast on Christmas morning. From these experiences, I learned the importance of both taking the time to serve others, and of treating anyone, especially those I serve, with dignity and respect.<\/p>\n

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My grandparents and I in Turkey in 2014<\/p><\/div>\n

In addition to this dedication and passion for service, my grandparents both also imparted in me a spirit for adventure. As two of the most well-traveled people I know, my grandparents filled my young mind with stories of their adventures around the world. Through tales and pictures of them travelling to highest steps of Machu Picchu to the greatest cathedrals in Europe, my grandparents have constantly impressed upon me the importance of travelling. They have shown me that there are no lessons, either in books or in the classroom, greater than those one learns by travelling to a new place, meeting new people, and seeing things entirely different from those they could find in their own home.<\/p>\n

If it was my grandparents who imparted in me the desire travel, I owe my curiosity and my independence to my parents. When we weren\u2019t at home or in school, my parents were taking my brother and I on extended camping trips to learn about and experience nature first hand. These trips were not only opportunities for us to spend time together as a family but also to gain a certain sense of confidence, humility and independence that I believe can only be gained by spending extended periods of time outside. If there is one thing I could thank my parents for above all else, it would be for teaching me to love nature and all it has to offer. Never have I felt so humbled as I did sitting in the dry lake bed of Boulder Lake in Colorado at sunset after a long day of backpacking, and never have I felt more accomplished than I did while climbing to the peak of Black Butte in Oregon for the first time when I was just 7 or 8 years old. I believe I have valued these experiences in nature so much because as I have grown up, experienced failures and successes, made decisions large and small, and moved farther and farther away from home, I know that I need only to find myself in nature to find myself in a place I know I belong.<\/p>\n

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My parents, brother and I hiking in Colorado<\/p><\/div>\n

I chose to discuss these personal qualities and skills I\u2019ve developed throughout my life because these are the qualities and skills that ultimately led me to decide to travel to the southern tip of Belize my senior year of high school. Although I did not realize it at the time, this trip was a major turning point in my life and has influenced countless decisions I have made since.<\/p>\n

My high school in Colorado (where I moved shortly after I finished middle school) has an established relationship with the Punta Gorda community, a town located in the most impoverished area of Belize. It was here that several of my classmates and I were fortunate \u00a0enough to spend a couple of weeks working with the elementary school and meeting locals. Going into the experience, I am still not sure what exactly I was expecting. In the end though, Punta Gorda was entirely different than I could have ever imagined and the Belizean people I met and interacted with permanently shifted my worldview.<\/p>\n

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Spending time with the school kids one afternoon in Punta Gorda<\/p><\/div>\n

Although most of my trip to Belize is something of a blur, I can most vividly remember my bus ride out of the small town on our last day of the trip. It was on this six-hour bus ride that I complete reexamined my place in the world. The poverty I witnessed in Belize was nothing like the poverty I had witnessed in the homeless shelters in downtown Phoenix. This kind of poverty was long-term, systemic, and more complicated than I anticipated. I think that going into Belize, I hoped that my time there would reveal some possible explanation of poverty that I could actively have a role in solving, but what I found was the opposite. I remember sitting in one of the back rows of the old school bus and asking myself over and over, why?<\/em> Why weren\u2019t things getting better even with outside intervention? What things were lacking in the system that prevented the system from improving? Why was I sent there to witness it?<\/p>\n

Ultimately, I found that I kept going back to the fact that in one of the towns we had visited outside of Punta Gorda, the residents had very limited access to clean water. I just couldn\u2019t possibly understand how people were ever to make progress and lift themselves out of poverty if they did not have access to such a basic resource. At this point in senior year, I was already leaning towards studying engineering of some sort in college because I had always excelled in math and science, but it was in this moment that I decided that I needed to study whatever engineering could teach me to design clean water systems. It was in this moment that I decided to study Civil Engineering, with a concentration in Water Resources Engineering, a degree that I am currently on track to finish next year. I made this decision because I realized that although poverty is so, so much greater than any one person, I have a duty to do my part to help eradicate it.<\/p>\n

I sit here now more than three years after my return from Belize, still contemplating the lessons I learned during my time there and the impact on the world I hope to one day have. My major is challenging, and often frustrating, but I am still dedicated to completing my degree and I still hope to use what I have learned to design structures and systems for those who need them the most. Earlier this year though, I began to feel as if I was losing focus of my original goal of working to end poverty through engineering. I began to feel as if my education up until this point has been so focused on high-level math and complicated structural calculations that I have not had time to think about how I will use all this knowledge for a greater good.<\/p>\n

It was this thought that inspired me to apply to the Global Social Benefit Fellowship. Although I realize that my work will not directly relate to engineering, I am looking forward to taking an in-depth look at social enterprises and how the work of social entrepreneurs has helped developing communities all over the world. And, although I may not be performing any engineering work for this fellowship, I am more than confident that the skills I will develop over the next nine months will prepare me for what lies ahead, whatever that may be. Really, I am again unsure what the next nine months will bring, but I am coming into this experience as I approach all of the opportunities I have had\u2014hoping only have some sort of positive impact and learn as much as possible along the way.<\/p>\n

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Hiking near the Grand Canyon last spring<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I’ll never forget where I am from–it is essential to remaining humble and evolving” -Frieda Pinto Growing up in the desert has its advantages and disadvantages. The greatest disadvantage being, of course, the hot, arid climate and a summer that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1067,"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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":0,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"loliver","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/laurengoestouganda\/author\/loliver\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"“I’ll never forget where I am from–it is essential to remaining humble and evolving” -Frieda Pinto Growing up in the desert has its advantages and disadvantages. The greatest disadvantage being, of course, the hot, arid climate and a summer that … Continue reading →","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/laurengoestouganda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/laurengoestouganda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/laurengoestouganda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/laurengoestouganda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1067"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/laurengoestouganda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/laurengoestouganda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/laurengoestouganda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions\/27"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/laurengoestouganda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/laurengoestouganda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/laurengoestouganda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}