For Sophia, joining ROTC is a way to narrow down her diverse interests and develop discipline

"I know something that I struggle with and that a lot of my friends struggle with is kind of balancing things and knowing where to put all your weight... Sometimes you gotta take a step back and have a little bit of a breather."

Watch the video and real the full transcript below

“I like to do a lot of things and that's kind of the problem. I can't really narrow it down. I've never really been able to narrow it down cuz I've always been, yeah, I've always loved painting, but I've always loved building things. And I've always loved science and I always love doing that kind of stuff. And I still like it now. My interests have always kind of been everywhere.

My name is Sophia. I'm 16.

I'm a junior at Carroll High School here in South Lake, Texas. Here we're on a block schedule. So every other day is a different schedule. I'll get here at like, 7, 7:30 or so. I'll be here all the way until 1:05. I'll get home at 1:30. I'll be home for an hour ago, I'll go get lunch, I'll go to work until 7:30. And then I'll go to a football game until 11 and then I'll come home and I'll go straight to bed. And so that's a little bit of everything, school and then work. But then also I get time to spend with my friends and that hour at home, I'm probably doing something I wanna do, like painting or stuff like that.

It's a little crazy, but I like it. I like being busy. Yeah, I work at the retirement home in Keller. I'm a waitress. I always saw it kind of a little bit of a helping thing, but mostly as just something that I love to do. So I don't really know where I would go with it from there, but it's definitely the most or one of the most rewarding things that I do.

No, of course, I wanna work with people. I'm always doubting, what will I do? How will I get there? When will I end up there? How much school will I go through, that kind of stuff.

Can you share a challenge you’ve faced and how it’s shaped you?

I know something that I struggle with and that a lot of my friends struggle with is kind of balancing things and knowing where to put all your weight. I have a lot of friends that all they do is academics. They kind of do academics, but all they do is band. All the efforts that they put into it is this or that or that. And I think something that a lot of people struggle with is kind of balancing it out over a lot of things.

You can have good academics, but you can still have a job. You can still see your friends and you can still have a hobby. But sometimes you gotta take a step back and have a little bit of a breather. So that's something that I think we all struggle with and that I put a lot of effort into trying to do.

We just had Thanksgiving break. I don't think that I was home for more than an hour at a time the entire time, but I still had a fun time. I worked and I saw my friends and I got to do my hobbies, all that kind of stuff and I worked on schoolwork. But it's okay to do a lot of things as long as you can balance them out and I think that's what a lot of us, especially high school students have trouble with, is balancing.”

What keeps you motivated?

“I think with having such a diverse breadth of things that I like to do, I know that there's stuff out there that I would like, but I don't really know. And there are people out there that I would like that I don't know.

And it's kind of the fear of missing out, right? But it's not really a fear anymore. I know definitely when I started having this schedule of I'm out all the time, I'm never home. It was like, God, I'm a junior in high school, there's only one year left after this. I don't wanna miss anything, but now it's just I like being busy and I like having things to do and there's stuff out there that I know I would like that I just haven't experienced yet. So I try and do that kinda thing. And I don't think I've ever really regretted staying out and doing stuff all the time and not being home. I like it. I like being busy. That's the main thing.

I'm applying to ROTC at University of Nebraska, but I'm gonna try and apply to ROTC to a lot of schools in Texas too. I would like to I think do that during college, maybe for Air Force, maybe for Coast Guard, not sure. But that's something that I'm interested in ROTC for sure.

My mom's father, my grandfather, he served in World War II. So he had that background, and I know that that was something that he valued a lot, and that my mom values a lot. So I kinda thought about it in that aspect. And one of our family friends went to the Airforce Academy, she loves it. And so it was just kind of a thing where it kept on coming up in different parts of my life, everywhere. And so I thought about it and I was like, yeah, that's kind of interesting. [LAUGH] And I kept looking, I was like, maybe, maybe I'd like that and now I'm taking physics and I really like physics. And if I end up wanting to join the Air Force, then that's an important thing to have a grasp on. I like the kind of discipline that it gives you and it's a good thing to have. Even if I just did ROTC through my college years, and then I only served four years, I think that would be nice to have a good background and a good set up to the rest of my life.”

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