This essay is one of 35 selected by a panel of judges for “Ambitions Interrupted,” a series from The GroundTruth Project and YouthVoices, its storytelling platform.
Name: Karianne Bag-ayan
Age: 18
Dream Job: Engineer
City, Country: Baguio City, Philippines
Current job/school: Agricultural engineering student
Challenge: Financial difficulties, pressure from parents
When I was 5 years old, my father let me help him plant a garden in the front yard. A worm wriggled on a mound of soil and I started playing with it. My father told me that the worm was helping the plants grow – I stared at it, amazed at the wonders of nature, and this is when I knew that I was going to work with the environment as an adult.
As I got older, I saw again and again that the earth is dying. I saw documentaries and heard speeches about melting polar ice caps, forest fires, pollution – animals perishing because of their changed environments. I now study agricultural engineering at my university, which is the closest that I can get to my true dream of environmental engineering. I attend a state university, which is subsidized with government aid, and this is the only relevant program they offer.
But I’m always discouraged by the lack of innovation in my home country, the Philippines. There isn’t enough support for science or research here as a whole, and the Philippines is slow to protect its environment. There are also so many great minds ignored among us – for example, Daniel Dingel, the Filipino inventor of the hydrogen reactor used in water-fueled cars.
What’s the point of creating a solution for the environment if no one uses it? Why should I get into this field when it seems like no one else is trying to?
Even my parents have pressured me to pursue something else – they wanted me to become an accountant-lawyer, but after I failed the courses, they told me to shift my attention to achieving cum laude under my current major.
But these are just obstacles that I must overcome.
I desperately want to be sure that I can become something and that I can affect even the slightest bit of change. I don’t want to be a failure. My next step will be to get a master’s degree in environmental engineering and combine agricultural engineering and environmental engineering in an innovative tech dream job.
This story was originally submitted to YouthVoices, a platform powered by The GroundTruth Project that encourages young people to share stories about the issues affecting their generation. Submit your own essays and answer new questions here, or learn more about global youth unemployment with this interactive map.