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Faith Over Fear, People!!
Submitted by: Olivia
New York, NYC24 year old with big dreams to help others and renew people's faith!
I would first like to begin by thanking God for all the blessings he has brought to my life. I would also like to thank Rhonda and her team for making The Secret a household name and for teaching people that they deserve to live their best lives.
Five years ago I was in my sophomore year at college and feeling unfulfilled with my Journalism major. I realized that it was not my real passion. I always had an affinity for foreign languages, particularly Spanish, and was taking an advanced literature class with the hardest Spanish professor that semester. As a non native speaker of the language, I was at a slight disadvantage to all of my native speaking classmates, but I remained positive and continued to work hard to get better and better. I finished that semester with the highest average in the class, and at end of the year, I changed my major to Spanish.
By my junior year in September, my professor encouraged me to apply for the masters program in Spanish at my university. I wanted nothing more than to continue studying and discussing literature in the language I loved so much. However, a masters degree at my school cost tens of thousands of dollars, and I was unsure of how I could pay for it. My professor mentioned that they offered teaching assistantships to the students who had the best grades. However, she told me that it was very competitive since there were only 7 or 8 scholarships and that I would have to continue to prove myself.
Several months later, while still in my junior year, I received a call out of the blue from a classmate about an opening for a Spanish tutoring job on campus at the university language lab. I was immediately hired and for a year, I worked with my English speaking peers to help them improve their Spanish language skills. I received phenomenal reviews from the students and really impressed the director of the language center. One of my supervisors, who happened to be a teaching assistant with the language lab, encouraged me to apply to the masters program despite my doubts of getting a scholarship. She was graduating that year and wanted me to inherit her scholarship and would put in a good word for me.
Despite this, I was by no means a shoe-in for this role. There were many powerful people that tried to sabotage me and make my life harder throughout this time because they did not want me to have the scholarship as a non native speaker of Spanish. I decided at this point to stop doubting and wouldn’t let them mess with my head because I knew in my heart I deserved this job.
For the next several months, I visualized myself being happy and helping others with Spanish at the language lab, while also enjoying my classes and pursuing my dream of being a working scholar in training. I felt that this job was mine and was not worried about what other people were saying.
In March of my last year of undergrad, I was formally offered the job of teaching assistant, aka the scholarship I wanted, at the language center. While in this role, all my tuition would be paid for, plus I would be given a generous stipend to pay for food and bills.
This May, I completed my goal of Master of Arts in Spanish with an almost perfect GPA. The assistantship was everything I wanted and more, despite a couple of bumps along the way.
Anyway, my point is that four years ago I never would have imagined I would be where I am today. In the words of the singer Monica: “God can open doors that no human being can close.”.
Don’t allow the jealousy or negativity of others to bring you down and make you feel undeserving of what you want. You have the strength within you to declare victory over anything that tries to take you off your path, and the way to do that is through positivity and faith. You will be provided with the right people and circumstances to help you on your journey to your dreams!!
Thank you and God bless each and every one of you!