Hello everyone. I want to begin by thanking everyone for providing me with this opportunity to introduce myself and break the ice. My name is Aditya and I am from Mumbai, India. Aditya is a Sanskrit word. Sanskrit is one of the world’s oldest languages. My name means “the sun” or “celestial light.”. Towards the end of my speech, I will tell you the significance of my name, but first, let me tell you about the experience that changed the direction of my life forever.
Before coming to America, I was living a very comfortable life in India. I never had to struggle for anything. I was living with my parents. Although that may sound weird to you here, in India, we have a family culture, which means that children stay with family even if they are independent. I never had to worry about earning money, food, housing etc. Everything was taken care of by my parents. It was really an easy going life. I never really thought of leaving my country and staying outside for such a long period.
But in September of 2005, my dad got an opportunity to work in NY. After a lot of inquiring and taking advice from people, I decided to leave my college in India early and move along with my parents. I never realized that as soon as I would land in the US, my series of struggles would start. After landing, I felt like my life was reset. In hindsight, it was all for the best.
My new life in NY began with applying to colleges. I wanted to continue my education. But I never thought that it would be so challenging for me to get admission here. For the first six months, I applied to college after college, seeking admission. But all the colleges denied my application because of missing and incomplete set of documents. I did not have the documents that colleges asked for to transfer credits from India. It became really frustrating to be at home, not being able to do anything and get only news of rejections. So you can imagine how happy and relieved I was when I finally got admission to a college. But even after getting admission, I was faced with a new struggle- not being able to continue from where I left off in India. After a lot of re-thinking and in desperation, I decided to start all over again, with a new major.
I moved into a dorm and soon found work on campus. After I got my first paycheck I was really happy. Why wouldn’t I have been happy? It was my first step towards growing up and becoming independent. This was for the first time that I had ever lived away from my family and I worked and earned money. But I hadn’t become completely independent yet, as I was soon to learn that my parents had to relocate back to India. It became really hard for me because from then, I had to manage everything for myself, for real. Before, I had my parents to remind me about almost everything (including my exams, assignments, laundry, etc.). It was like having a personal assistant, or rather - several.
After a year and a half, I graduated, but I faced an obstacle yet again, as I had graduated when the US was deep in recession. Somehow, I managed to find a job in a very small firm which barely paid anything. This motivated me to get a better position in a better company. I remember days when I would survive on a cup of noodles or PB&J (peanut butter and jelly). I felt lucky to have a steady paycheck when people were losing their jobs. Finally, after 900+ applications, I landed a decent paying job. Once I started my new career path, I started thinking about my future and became more serious about life.
When I look back today, I see how the struggles and down times I went through helped me in a good way. They gave me confidence to make my own decisions and changed me from being a kid to an adult. When I came to this country, I was forced to be outside my comfort zone. I had to take on responsibility and as a result, I changed as a person. I was able to grow up, for real. I found my interests, strengths, and weaknesses. I found new motivations and new goals. I learned that the opportunity to come here made me who I am today and I found new meaning in the saying, “There’s always a sunrise after a sunset.”
As I said earlier my name, Aditya, means “the sun.” I feel like I lived up to my name because when I came here, the initial struggles I faced made me feel like I was surrounded by darkness. But now that I look back, I see that I “rose” up like the sun, and am now ready to face the new dawn, which is the rest of my life.
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