Cayni’s Goals and Aspirations – Her Story

Note: This post was produced in 2022 by a participant in DNDA’s Summer Youth Program writing workshop led by Beverly Aarons.

Author: Fadumo A.

Her name is Cayni and she’s going into 11th grade this September. She plans on graduating high school and going to college. Where do you ask? The University of Washington (UW). She plans on pursuing a degree in either healthcare or computer engineering or maybe even business (business being a far-fetched third option for her). Why do you ask? Well, let’s find out.

She was interested in healthcare from a very young age, and she wanted to go into it ever since she was young. And it was because of a few reasons. What first sparked her interest when she was younger was primarily the people around her. Specifically her friends and family members. They’re the ones that inspired her to go into the medical field by always telling her that she’d be a good doctor. She also used to watch a lot of cartoons that were centered around being doctors.

“I only remember the name of one of those, and it was called Doc McStuffins,” Cayni said.

As she got older, a lot of people that she knew would work in healthcare and started telling her about how good the career was and were recommending her to try it out. The people that she knew that worked in healthcare were her cousins and some of them were doctors and others were nurses.

“I’m interested in being a pediatric doctor so far,” she said. Mainly because she likes working with kids and gets along with them really well, and would rather treat a kid versus an adult.

With computer engineering it was a little different. She realized that computer engineering might be an alternative choice for her much more recently and at an older age than when she first started being interested in healthcare. She first started considering it when she realized that she was intrigued in what computer engineers do for a living and that that career path rather than a healthcare one was more flexible and had more freedom.

“I’m primarily interested in how computers work and the mechanisms behind its machinery,” she said. She also knows some people that are starting their careers in computer engineering now. These people are her family members and specifically people that she knows directly. And they either started off by going to college or doing bootcamps for coding and stuff in that genre.

Besides computer engineering and healthcare she’s also thought of going into business and maybe starting her own business someday. “I kind of like the idea of being my own boss and the freedom that comes with that,”she said.

She has aunts and uncles that have businesses themselves. She would want to perhaps open up either a clothing store, a cafe, or a convenience store. But for now, healthcare and computer engineering are her first options. “I haven’t been deep researching these fields but I have been watching lifestyle videos about them and reading stories about people who have or are working in those fields,” she said.

Cayni is not just all work and no play though, she has hobbies outside of school. Some of the things she enjoys are reading and watching shows and stuff like that. She doesn’t really have anything planned for vacations or breaks other than mostly relaxing and staying in. She hopes to travel in the future and wants to travel to a bunch of different places (like for instance, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Dubai, etc).

For the places where her family is, she wants to go visit them; and for other places, she doesn’t really have a plan other than exploring. Her family members are all around the globe. Some are in Turkey, others are in Kenya, and some are also in Somalia. And she said she wants to visit all of those places.

She also wants to learn new skills, such as new languages, cooking, baking, learning how to garden, water painting and just painting and artsy stuff in general. She finds that learning these skills will be really fun and enjoyable for her. The sky’s the limit at this point in time for Cayni, and she’s excited for where the future takes her.