My name is Reynaldo Cabral, I am eighteen years old, I moved to the United States of America when I was seven years old, and now I am going to college. The major I am studying for is Computer Engineering. What I am going to talk about is time. It has always been an interest of mine. I am always thinking about it. My head is always in the future. Just being able to see an event and having the ability to change it or just look up to it. We all think about time and the ability to change it, but most just say “yea that would be cool” and that is the end of it, but not me. In my thoughts I remind my self of my past and the experiences I have gained from it, and look up to the future to set my destination. Thinking about my past and my future, imagining it and losing my head in the clouds because of it made me the person who I am today. I am a person that looks up to the future and prepares for it. I am also a person that looks back to the past as something that forged me for what the future has in stored for me. A person that looks at the present and gets through the obstacles that faces me. A person that may not be able to fix my past, but still makes a better future for himself and anyone around him. This is what thinking about my past and future has made me today.

My past may be full of mistakes, Embarrassing moments, regretful choices, and unforgettable moments, but it is what made me. No matter how bad my past was I would not change it. In my past, I have been homeless, seen my father hit my mother, got bullied in school, and got into many fights at school. The events that happened in my past shaped me to be a better person. Seeing my father hit my mother when I was in middle school taught me to respect women, I saw the reaction of my mother and how she felt, needles to say she threw the house phone at him and kicked him out the house, after words I saw how sad she was and crying, I felt bad and cried with her, this taught me that women should be treated with respect because no women should cry or feel sad because of what the man she picked to be with did to her. Being homeless was not the best experience in my life but I learned to cherish things, I found life to not be that easy, while I was homeless I lived in a shelter, in the shelter we didn’t have much to eat and we didn’t have anything to entertain ourselves with in the weekends, I was still going to school while this happened, I was in the 8^th grade, and most of the food I ate was there, but those tough time and running out of food in the shelter taught me that life is not easy but anyone can make it better. Getting bullied in school taught me how to be strong, I got bullied in school twice in my life, once when I was in primary school in Dominican Republic For having long hair and when I moved to the United States of America for not knowing English. This taught me to be strong, not to judge other people. Looking back at my past I ensure that the decisions I make now prevent it from repeating. These experience has given me knowledge to advise or help a friend who needs the guidance or is felling down, I may not be able to ensure a great guide but being able to just point to the right path that might help get them back in track and feel better. With these events from my past I learned to be a better person.

In my past there was not only bad times but also times that inspired me to pursue a Carrera for Computer Engineering. In my past, before I moved to the United States of America, I was about five years old when it happened, I got gum stuck in the disc drive of my home computer because I figured the gum would take shape of a CD in the drive and create a bubble gum game. When my dad opened up the desktop case to remove the CD Drive that had gum I stuck there, I was able to see the inside of a computer for the first time; I was amazed by all of the different parts of a computer. Ever since that day, I loved taking apart anything I could find and trying to figure out how it worked. My mom would have to hide the screwdrivers from me because I wanted to take things apart. Even though I loved to take things apart I could never be able to put them back together with is one of the reason she hid the tools away from me. Ever since that day I loved computers and the parts inside. I always wanted to make my own computer get all hands on and feel an accomplished when I completed it. I think it is cool the way every piece can not work with out the other, for me it representing the human body in someway, even though we have endless storage in our brain and the computer has a limited amount. This has motivated me to be a Computer Engineer when I grow up and end up being the best next thing like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.

The future is now where I focus my gaze. The future can have many outcomes. The future is not a set destination unless you make it one, and it is not a set goal until you make it one. The decisions we make create our path that leads to one of the many outcomes and possibilities that can take place. With these things in mind I lay out the possibilities and choose which once could lead to the best outcome. I always make sure to keep a positive mind of what could happen. I took the computer engineering as my major because I want to use my vision of the future to create electrical devices or computers that can help humanity advance even further than what we have so far. As we all know the future does not always goes as planned but I exploit my surroundings and see if I could shape it to be as I want or at least close to it. The future as we know is always passing by as the present. Once the future starts to pass by as the present it comes with obstacles we have to overcome and make it the way we planned it to be. The future can be any given distance, it all depends what we are preparing for.

I look into the future for answers and I look into the past to help me make decisions. While the past shapes me, the present challenges me. Looking to the future inspires me to design the next best thing in this century. It may not be now but it could be tomorrow. What we do in the present is our cause, and it effects what we will become in our future. Our failure, bad times, our good times, and our experiences are fragments of a bigger picture and they are what made you today and for the future.