Kendall Obando-Sanchez
Compare your career plans as a first-year student with your career plans now. Why did your plans change or not change?
When I came into college, my best friend from high school convinced me that I should do political science. It seemed interesting, given that they had sort of fed my interests throughout my late high-school career with constant appeal. However, after spending my first year nearly minoring in Politics, I felt a change of heart.
Vocationally, I had always had the idea in mind that I wanted to help people. One career that helps people is being a lawyer. I felt like going through the politics and international affairs major at Wake would bring me closer to helping people, but it did not. This is nothing against the department of course; I had great experiences. But the main thing that pushed me away from political science was the growing thought in my mind of another, potentially fulfilling experience in STEM, which was the pre-med track.
I wanted to scratch that itch, because I had gotten tired of retelling history through subjective lenses in politics. I wanted, instead, to do math, chemistry, science, all things that I thoroughly enjoyed in high school. Furthermore, I wanted to shift back to humanities-based career paths, like psychology, therefore I started (and continued) my major in that department as well.
Following that journey, I felt like I could integrate my pre-med pathway with psychology, and found myself dreaming about being a psychiatrist. Then I got to know who I really am my junior year, and began to drift away from pre-med, because I did not believe that I would be satisfied with a physician’s career. I spent a summer shadowing a psychiatrist at a hospital, and it just didn’t click.
Then I looked back at my psychology major, decided to drop my chemistry minor (to not continue pre-med) and saw a career in clinical psych, while also picking up another minor that seemed interesting to me (Schools, Education, and Society ; also known as SES). Then I drifted away from clinical psych and found myself entranced with the idea of making a change, and on a grand scale at that, through education policy. I thought about being a scientist in the policy sphere, getting a masters in programs of education policy and the like, hopefully being a contributing mind to a think tank…
Then it all circled back around again… to law.
Reading about cases, being obsessed with making change, and getting to know myself more and more throughout my college career shifted me to then become pre-law. I’m obsessively competitive in the sense that I hate to lose, so I equated that innate desire, along with my social and communication skills and desire to make change, to law school!
I’m not entirely sure how the future will look, but I do know that I wish to become a lawyer.
Needless to say, my plans changed – many times- and it’s okay that they did. I regret nothing, as I got the entire liberal arts experience by dipping my toes in nearly every department on campus in some way.
Now that you are a graduating student, what advice do you wish you could have given yourself as an incoming student four years ago?
After thinking about this question for days, if not weeks, I cannot come up with something that I can think of as worth interfering with space-time (the butterfly effect is scary y’all)
Nothing.
If I had not made the mistakes I did as a dumb first-year student, sophomore, junior, or even senior, I would not be who I am today. I only have known what I have experienced, and I can honestly say that the version of myself today is the version of myself I am most proud of. I want that to continue into tomorrow and the future.
College is a huge journey of self-discovery, with just as much anguish and hardship as any other time in life, maybe with a little extra fun sprinkled here and there.
I believe the worst piece of advice you can give someone is to “never change”. Albeit, I acknowledge the contextual relevance of this statement, as someone saying so is just appreciating a certain quality of who you are, and they find it so wonderful that they wish you to never change. HOWEVER, the fundamental message, if taken literally, cannot be more hindering.
Always change. I do not believe I would have enjoyed my experience at Wake if I did not change. Universities are a machine of change, and the individuals within that machine operate best when they are adapting themselves. There is no changing who and what you are on a fundamental level, but as you age and grow, the only objective good I see is to change for the better, and always strive to be a better person each consecutive year, day, hour, and minute.
Therefore, no, I would not tell my incoming-self any piece of advice, because I am proud of who I am today. I would not be who I am without learning from the mistakes I made, and I won’t be who I strive to be tomorrow if I don’t try to be better every day.
Imagine you return to campus for your 10-year reunion. What do you hope will remain the same? What do you hope will be different?
The structure and life of the university varies year to year, with a mission of Pro Humanitate in mind, you can only do so much as an entity of a University when your student body changes every year.
There are only a few things that I still wish to see if and when I return for a 10-year reunion…
- School colors – If it changes from Black and Gold, something went fundamentally wrong, and WFU had an identity crisis.
- The POD – If Provisions are not On Demand, how else will hundreds if not thousands of us satisfy our cravings at 3 a.m., or our necessary nutritional needs when bereft of sufficient sustenance from a late night grind?
- Some big, tall indicative structure – Right now it’s the chapel. I’m not saying we should take the chapel away, but in some future where WFU feels the need to get rid of it for whatever developmental reason, I feel like the photogeneity of the Quad would take a huge hit.
- On that note, the Quad: quads are necessary cultural centers for the undergraduate experience at many universities, and Wake Forest has made too many traditions out of the structure of our quad to get rid of it in 10 years.
What was the most rewarding experience you had as a Wake Forest student?
There are too many to count, but one that is ever-present every year, every semester, is turning in an argumentative and/or research paper.
There’s nothing more rewarding than turning in an extensively long, detailed, and incessantly difficult, high stakes research paper.
I plan on going into Law school following my graduation here, so it is not as if this rewarding experience is something I seek out as something to do, but it has definitely been an incredible challenge to go through. Creating an argument out of pieces of history, in whatever department, whether it be research/humanity oriented, biological/ natural sciences, or political/philosophically oriented, a paper of this kind has one central core to its being, and that is a THESIS.
Man, do these papers really take your energy! The grueling process of accumulating resources towards a general topic, then having to create an argument out of the research you have already accumulated, and/or changing that argument and scrapping half of your work… there’s just so much that goes into crafting an argument and making sure you support it thoroughly, while also taking into account confounding evidence. I have done this process in multiple departments: psychology, biology, philosophy, SES (education), my FYS (First Year Seminar), humanities, religion, neuroscience, and politics and international affairs. Needless to say, it is an essential part of the Wake Forest experience to at least write ONE paper with a big ‘ol THESIS.
The most rewarding part of this entire experience is not the result, nor the grade you get back, but turning in something you know you’re proud of and have worked hard on. Also, the Canvas confetti following that confirmation of your “Submit Assignment” button is the most rewarding experience I have had as a Wake Forest student, on many occasions.
Wake Forest’s Pro Humanitate motto is a guiding philosophy for many students and alumni. Did it have an impact on your student experience and has it influenced your plans for the future?
I had always had inherently altruistic philosophies for the furthering of my education. In high school, going into college, I knew at least one thing about a vocational choice I wanted to make, and that is to help others.
My particular experience with life, like many, was unfair. Coming from where I come from, and doing what I had to do to get where I am, is simply unfair. I’m not going to detail my life story, but let’s just say I was very lucky that I had amazing family and friends that directed me towards the path of life that included higher education, and even potentially a career, but not everyone in my position has had that same experience.
Humanity, as it stands, is a journey of growth, scholarship, and survival. A lot of us in higher education take for granted the means it takes to be in a position where the focus is no longer survival, so much so that professional lives and careers feel life or death in and of themselves. We all live in our worlds that mean something to us, but many of us forget that survival is no longer a primary concern for our wellbeing.
I, as a graduate of Wake Forest University, want to – and plan on – carrying out something that is for humanity. I wish for fewer humans in the future of our world to have to struggle with survival, and never get to experience scholarship and the self-growth that comes with it. Hopefully whatever changes I can be an part of will mold our world further away from realities of survival with no scholarship, growth, and comfort.