When I look back on my four years at Penn, what will I remember? I know the memories that stand out the most to me today, but I wonder what I'll remember six months from now, 20 years from now, and which stories I choose to highlight as more and more time passes on. There's obviously the phenomenal education that I received from The Wharton School, but my education has been so much more than just lectures and exams. There's the insanity of group projects and team dynamics like freshman year MGMT 100 where we routinely booked 8 GSRs back to back and then my Impact Investment team this year where our main thread had the subject line "Kevin Sucks!!!!" for over 40 emails. There have been bonds formed over the collective struggles of junior spring OCR, leaving core classes for senior year, and trying to write as tiny as possible for our formula sheets. There have been late night Wawa runs and Insomnia deliveries, and who can forget staying up until 5:30AM in the Struggle Booth? At the same time, there have been classes beyond Wharton that have defined my life in ways I never imagined. Adding Digital Photography as a 6th class my second semester senior year was a little aggressive, but it's fueled this blog and pushed the boundaries of my creativity more than any other class at Penn. Without my Asian American Communities class, I would probably still be uncomfortable with admitting that I am an Asian American, something that I've embraced more and more in the past year.
But above all else, it's the friendships that have shaped my life. I have found people that truly know me inside and out. People who understand my quirks and oddities, yet love me anyway. I'm still amazed that my insane freshman hall experience resulted in some of my best friends at Penn. I'll never forget the time we installed an elliptical in our balcony, or the time I unwittingly drank beer water for 2 weeks out of my Brita, or the time when the dining hall was unprepared for Snowpocalypse and we had to live off of bread rinds. I've lived with two amazing houses which has fostered relationships that are going to last a lifetime, and I've spent four years with the amazing women of Chi Omega and become a real family with my lineage. I delved so much deeper into my faith thanks to Greek IV and found relationships in the Greek community beyond what I could imagine my freshman year. And who can forget all the people beyond Penn as a physical place? There was that time I thought I was terrified of being separated from a Christian community for 9+ months, and God sent me the most beautiful small group at Redeemer in NYC and plopped me into the world of Martha's Vineyard FOCUS. And of course, there's London. I don't think enough blog posts will ever describe the love in my heart that I have for my group from London - these people helped me find myself, even though I was thousands of miles away from home.
So a huge thank you to everybody who has shaped my life and my experience at Penn. I couldn't have done any of it without you, and God knows I wouldn't be who I am today without you all either. I started this journey such a different person, and now, four years later, I finally feel like I am who I am meant to be. And yes, it's an amazing place to be.
