Aloha Antonio,

You and I often forget to appreciate how far we’ve come and can only focus on difficulties that have yet to rear their heads. Fortunately, I’m here today to offer you a gift, the gift of a reason to pat yourself on the back. In this moment I am conjuring images and thoughts of mine that only happened to me over the past few weeks, but for you are probably long forgotten events, completely lost in a fog of new exciting adventures and a host of new challenges. So, if you’ll allow it, come take a trip down memory lane with me.

It was never hard for me to move, despite the increasingly high tally of family moves, a more appropriate word might be ‘exhausting’. These cardboard boxes that blotted the halls and my bedroom never sat in one place for very long either, but they also never disappeared. I could always think of some kind of trinket, maybe a shirt or pair of headphones that might be in one of these boxes over here but could be over there, too. Over time I tend to shrug it off saying, “I guess I didn’t really need it anyway” and stop looking. It’s too easy to do this, just like it became too easy to think that I’ll never be academically adept enough to get into a good college and onto a well-rounded career path. Even though I describe myself as creative and fit with good common sense, my embarrassing math skills felt colossal compared to all of my talents.

There are things in my life that I can always rely on no matter which state my dad’s work sends us to. For example, the handful of trustworthy friends I’ve made over the years online, the people I tend to spend more time talking to than not. Over the course of the move I’d itch for a nice, long conversation with one of them. Anything to break the tedium of unpacking and furniture arranging, I thought. Two of my best friends are certainly dissimilar when it comes to personality, academic history and location in the country, but one thing they have in common is that they’re both working towards diplomas. I am always impressed with how hard they both work for their goals, even if causes me a small pang of guilt.

Except that the universe seemingly wouldn’t accept my lazy attitude and my friend named Lindsay, who lives in Hawaii, kept telling me how I should go to the University of Hawaii in a few years. At first I was skeptical, how would I even achieve that? No college would ever take me with my terrible math skills, let alone a university. However, soon enough my heart was welling up with a newfound purpose. I still don’t know exactly why, maybe it was because the one trip to Hawaii my family took when I was just five years old that left a lasting impression on me, or maybe it was the prospect of living in a dorm close to the sea while I study technology or English or whatever I felt like doing with my education. I ran to my mom and dad.

“You can’t expect me to feel okay with you living on some other island that we can’t easily visit,” my mom said, voicing her concern. She always meant well and usually only needs some time to process her reactions to things, but there are some ways of thinking that come with being a mother of three that you can’t win an argument with, so I held my tongue whenever she brought that point up. My dad would either merely ask me to look up admission requirements for the University of Hawaii or he would express his excitement, sharing my opinion that studying in a tropical setting would be great. I think he mostly liked sounding supportive, especially when I have a real goal for a real education. My parents regularly told me that I’ll have to work hard to achieve this goal, which included doing well in high school. My super charged determination deflated once that sunk in.

In retrospect, the experience reminds me of the story of Icarus, my uncalculated academic goal which was hatched overnight being handled poorly by my hot headedness made me feel like how he must have when his wings burnt up in the sun. Unlike the story, though, my plans were not frivolous if applied with the right amount of caution. My parents continued to support my ideas and my dad would put me in an online high school soon enough so I could start earning credits and such. “Yes, but which one?” I asked, worried that one misstep in this crazy years-long plan of mine could make me miss my opportunity and waste my time. “I’ll make sure they’re fully accredited, it’ll be fine,” he assured me. A couple weeks later, I was just about to start Primavera Online High School, the school that would hopefully launch my education westward.

To conclude, if you only take away one thing from this, it’s that whenever the road ahead becomes seemingly impossible, you’ll just have to put your best foot forward and dig deeper. Even the brightest students, I’m sure, will have moments where they believe they’re doomed. They wouldn’t be students without those moments; the difference is that they keep going anyway.

At the time of writing this there is no way of knowing what happens in the next chapter of your life, but I am wholly confident that it’ll be something you will feel proud of.

Sincerely, Antonio