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Coming from a rural South Asian Background my parents have always held education in the highest regard because they themselves never had the opportunity to pursue it. Hence they had instilled the idea upon me that college is the ultimate goal in life. Absorbing their ideas as my own, I had always felt the same, that yes college is the ultimate goal in life. But as of late I have come to realize that there is more than just getting accepted into the college of your dreams. Rather college is just a stepping stone in the journey towards the final aim. This realization struck me two summers ago in the humid air of Saudi Arabia as I was completing Hajj (pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca), the fifth pillar of Islam, A realization that changed my life.

As I stood amidst a whirlpool of people I searched for a sight to balance my eyes upon. The search didn't continue for long as I feasted my eyes upon the Kabaa, the holy black stone, in an instant its beauty consumed me from the inside out. I had always heard myths of its beauty and I thought it was a simple wives' tale that upon seeing the stone tears would fall. But then I felt a cool sensation on my cheeks and I realized that it was no myth; the beauty of the Kabaa was so strong that I too began crying. In that one moment I reconsidered every aspect of my life and re-prioritized my priorities. And I began to have an epiphany that perhaps what I had been taught all the years isn't all there is to the picture, but there is more , much more to just pleasing your parents, making your place in society and getting into a good college. But to continue from there onto a higher road to pursue a higher goal, and then leave it a better place than you found it.

I failed to understand how this one experience rearranged my whole perceptive on life but nonetheless I was grateful that it did. Those moments and emotions had served as an inspiration and as a catalyst to my realizing that I have evolved...