"Pace is the Trick"

The thing about life decisions though is as long as they're well thought out you really can't go wrong. I've had two rather major decisions in my life: Deciding which college to go to and deciding what I want to do after college.

With regards to the former, I applied to NCSU, a university near my parents house, with the original intention of living at home and commuting. Then one day my mom came back from a hair appointment and told me I should apply to ASU because it had a good CS program. So I went ahead and applied to ASU. I ended up being denied to NCSU and given that I only applied to two took the acceptance to ASU. Now I will say that in this case it wasn't fully thought out but I'll blame that on the maturity of an 18 year old.

Second life decision came from graduating from ASU. I had always had the intention of going and working in a small company and building myself up from there but I was dealt cards in life that made prevent that possibility. So I took up another desire of travelling before I was weighed down by responsibilities. I opted to apply to the JET program for this and ended up being denied because there was a more qualified person in our school who had applied (I'm friends with her, she's a nice girl). So it became a question of what the am I going to do? Either work for a big company or find another alternative for going abroad. Probably one of the highest stress parts of my life.

I'm indebted to a certain doctor back home because he asked his friend in Taiwan about an MBA program. That inquiry didn't end up working but another friend advertised the IMBA to him one day and he told me about it.

Now think about it: I wouldn't be here if not for the doctor's influence on my life. I wouldn't have met him if I had chosen to do a CS degree instead of a CIS degree. I wouldn't have had the option between CS and CIS if I hadn't gone to ASU. I wouldn't have gone to ASU if I had gotten accepted to NCSU. I wouldn't have applied to ASU if my mom hadn't heard about it during a hair appointment.

So I'm in Taiwan working on a master’s thesis because of a hair appointment.

Decisions in life can be stressful because there is a lot of weight behind them and advantages/barriers to each. Regardless of the one you make though, you will succeed and go down a very different path than if you had chosen the other. Though at the same time, even small things in your life can become rather remarkable.