Michael Iwashima
Santa Clara University
By the time I reached middle school, I was on track to achieving my childhood dream, becoming a professional soccer player. I was a starter while playing in an international tournament hosted by FC Barcelona. I was scouted out by Athletico Madrid and invited to practice with the youth academy team. These achievements seemed unreal to me at the time however, my progress quickly came to a halt after I completely tore my ACL at the age of 12. After a year of recovery, I practiced even harder than I had before in order to get back on my track with soccer. Unfortunately, my body never fully recovered and I continued to sustain injuries throughout the following 6 years. Fast forward to my junior year summer, I was now pursuing a different fascination of mine, sound engineering. I participated in a summer camp for sound engineering at Flashpoint Chicago and from that experience, was invited back to help in a music session with a professional artist. The experience was again unreal for me as someone who hadn’t even gone to college to study sound engineering. I was recording local artists and getting paid to mix their music. I even had already made a connection with an individual that worked at Grade A Production and I believed that I would pursuing sound engineering as a profession.
I have ended up in college studying bioengineering because I recognized a new fascination of mine, the brain. My dream is to understand the language of the brain and create brain machine interfaces which can push the boundaries of what human brains can currently achieve. This dream seems unreal, even bordering fictional stories, however, when given the choice between pursing a secure job or an unreal dream, I have never chosen the secure job.
