Share the Dream: My Life, My Focus, My Goal Share the Dream: My Life, My Focus, My Goal: Costa, Shane

Share the Dream essay by Shane Costa

Hello, I am Shane Costa, a freshman at UMass Dartmouth, and I am a first- generation student. I am primarily Portugueses mixed, and I live with my dad very close to the university in Fall River. I commute and get here by bus every morning. I am a first- generation student, and my dad originally encouraged me to go to college. I primarily enrolled in because of many reasons, and I don't believe it would be possible for me to choose just one, but I will list a few. I enrolled because my dad really encouraged me to try and my friends also inspired me to enroll, since most of my friends were planning on going to college and I at the time had no idea what I wanted to do after school, which was a concurring pattern through my life I never really thought of what I wanted to be or what I wanted to do. I'm still not fully sure what I want to do. I am currently hoping that my time here and taking classes will let me figure out what I truly want to do or what I want to become. The only cavate stopping me was that I didn't have the money for college it'd be nearly impossible, and I wasn't so eager to go to college and go bankrupt and not even use it because I was unsure with what I wanted to do. So, when I was going on a field trip and checking in with the program, I was in that was similar to pre-college courses and activities to see if you'd like college. A counselor there told me about a new program that if your family makes less than a certain amount college would be theoretically free from what I heard. That moment was the only time I wondered about going to college and was going to focus on it. The woman that told me, helped and guided me through a big part of the process and paperwork of college and I am very grateful for that. I'm not completely sure what I want to do but I have a handful of things I'm interested in, mainly a computer science degree for cyber security or something to do with computer science, mainly cyber security for now. Secondarily I was thinking about going into law since there is also a lot you can do with it, and I also thought about going into the force since I do like to try and help people and I'd be good at the physical part of it too. Lastly, I thought about doing a major that involved psychology and philosophy because those classes and subjects are very interesting and fun to me so lately, I've been more intrigued about them. The impact I want to have on the world is definitely not a thing I really had too much thought about but it was brought up to me a couple times since my dad wanted me to be someone very important that could possibly change the world but for me that seemed to grandiose I always wanted a simple happy life and just cruise by. I didn't want to do anything major since a simple and peaceful life seemed more intriguing and less complicated. More currently now I have seen myself wanting to help out and contribute to the community and the world. Thats why I like the idea of law or cyber security because I'm protecting people and am making an impact, so I do hope I have some presence in helping others and improving our society even if it's not super grand.