Sup y’all. This is Jonathan again, but this time I’ll be writing a little bit about myself. I have an organic chemistry exam coming up, so this will probably be a shorter one.

I am Jonathan, a sophomore studying nutritional sciences at Cornell University. I am one of the newer members of the School For a Village team, and I’m very excited to work with my fellow communications manager, Simran, as well as the rest of the team. 

My past experiences have a lot to do with the person that I am today. I was born in China and moved here when I was seven-years-old. My parents both came from poor, rural parts of China, so it was incredible that they were able to go to college and move to the United States to give me a better future. They had to work extremely hard and sacrifice a lot to provide me with the resources that they did not have when they were children.

We lived in a small one-room apartment in Seattle when we first arrived in the States, and we stayed there for a year or two. It was in Seattle that I met my first best friend – an immigrant from China just like me. He later passed away from stomach cancer after I moved to Maryland. In Maryland, we had a bigger apartment, but we had different problems… you see… we lived in a community that wasn’t very well-off, and my friends and I got picked on. Thinking back now, it wasn’t that big of a deal, and those experiences did help me toughen up. Eventually, my parents saved enough money to move us to a suburban home. We are doing quite well now, but those hardships taught me a lot of life lessons, like the unimportance of the opinions of others and the importance of hard work.

So yeah, I’ve lived among people who weren’t as fortunate as most of us, and have seen some of their struggles. My dream is to be able to open a clinic in the future that exploits certain aspects of the healthcare system to provide cheap or free healthcare to those who are unable to afford it. I’ve always been a rule-breaker, and have made plenty of mistakes in my past, but at one point I decided that if I’m going to keep breaking rules, I should do it with purpose. Because of this dream of mine, I’ve been trying to develop ways to sustain myself such as investing and starting small businesses.

My dream is all about improving the quality of lives of others, and I want to contribute to the world in any way possible, which is why I decided to join School For a Village when I saw the opportunity to help improve the quality of education in youths who do not have the same access to resources compared to us. Besides, I find it extremely satisfying and exciting to work with a smaller group of talented individuals who have limitless potential.

In terms of role models, I can’t really say that I have any. I like Kobe Bryant’s work ethic. I like Dwayne Johnson’s determination. I like Bruce Lee’s self-control, but ultimately, I never really looked up to anyone because I always kept telling myself that I had to pave my own path instead of following in someone else’s footsteps. I’m very divided in terms of STEM class favoritism – I love biology courses, but I dislike organic chemistry, although I’m pretty darn ready to ace this chemistry exam tomorrow (edit: mission accomplished).

Nowadays, I don’t get too much free time, but if I do, I like to play soccer (soccer addict since middle school), play the piano (played for 12 years yikes), and binge the heck out of shows from all around the world. I also like working out, hiking, and biking with my friends when we can all find some free time in our schedules. Recently, I’ve been trying to learn how to play the guitar – hurts my fingers sometimes. So yeah, I work hard, but it’s also important to stop and take a breather to avoid burning out.

My favorite quote is actually from a fictional movie – “why do we fall, Bruce? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.” This quote is from the first movie of the Batman trilogy, a true masterpiece. In my opinion, how successful someone is isn’t measured by their status or their wealth, but by the obstacles that they had to overcome to get there. In order to succeed, we have to fall, and sometimes, we have to look for opportunities to fall to succeed.

And oh boy… I’m going to have to fall A LOT if I’m going to even come close to the goal I have.

Thanks for taking the time to read this! This is the second to last post of this spotlight series. Last, but definitely not least, we have Jefferson’s story – keep an eye out for it next week!