As an adolescence, we usually dream about the direction we would like our life to go, within our career paths, what was your dream during this time? 

• ” When I was a teenager, I wanted to become and artist. I actually had no idea what a career really was but I knew I’d like to do sketches and express myself. I knew I liked art class…. and those dreams were shattered but that’s what I was thinking when I was 13.”

Can you talk to me about specific instances that influenced you to diverge from the route that you were on? How did these instances lead you to your current situation?

• “My mother had a different version of success. She told me I should become a doctor mainly because of financial security and so I fell into that cause obviously she’s my mother and I thought mothers know best. She helped me to apply to a school that we thought had the best program that could get into medical  school and then yea I was a bio major at Howard University . She helped me to shadow different doctors the she knew. Then that drove me to hate the idea of being a doctor because she shoved it down my throat and then I ned to assist her with paying for undergraduate expenses so then I started the research program. My research program was in the ecology and the evolution program department and that was really fun and so I took that alternative.”

Do you believe in happenstance? Fate? or both?

• “Fate. I enjoy believing that there are forces pushing and pulling me through life. It makes me happier to believe in fate. So, I’d rather be happy than think things are randomly moving through time. That’s boring  and makes me wonder if death will be just a blank and unmotivated.”

How had your perspective of college shaped from childhood into your adolescence”

• “During my childhood. I didn’t know what college was. I absolutely had no clue college was a thing until I became a teenager and my parents defined it for me. I just always imagined myself in school so when they told me that existed, it didn’t really change my mind how I thought of it. I guess in existence, it changed from childhood to adolescence. “

When beginning college, what were your initial feelings and thoughts? 

• “At first, I didn’t understand how I was supposed to make friends. That was my first concern cause academics was not something that was a huge problem. But, yea it was mainly how to make friends,  I was trapped in a little room with two other people and like in a bunk bed and barely had any living space and so I think that was my first impression. But, then it obviously developed into the best time ever. “

During your post-graduation phase of life, are there any lessons you learned and would like to share?

• “You don’t have to have everything together.  You also don’t have to think that what you are doing right now you’ll be doing for the rest of your life. ”