Latest / HAVE FAITH LET IT BEGIN® / Reach for the Stars: Teens Talk College, Careers & Confidence (Part 1)

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Reach for the Stars: Teens Talk College, Careers & Confidence (Part 1) · HAVE FAITH LET IT BEGIN®

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  Have faith. Let it begin. When it starts right now.
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  Welcome to Have Faith. Let it begin. Here's your host, Angel Santana.
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  Ariel, can you say, have faith? Let it begin. Let it begin? Let it begin. Say, have faith.
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  Let it begin. Let it begin. No. No? No? Okay. Hi, Noah.
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  Noah! Noah! Happy birthday, Noah! Katelyn, I'm so lazy.
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  Noah.
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  This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.
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  This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.
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  This little light of rain, I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine.
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  Let it shine. Let it shine. Yeah.
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  Daddy, I'm so excited, but I have one question. What's your question?
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  I'm going to be a pastor or a minister.
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  Good question. I don't know, but it is all in God's hands.
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  Good morning. You're listening to Have Faith Lab again, and it starts right now.
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  They say that college is a step in your road to success.
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  Embrace the change and release the experience and keep everything in front of
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  you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Have Faith, Let It Begin.
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  This is Angel Santana, and it is a true honor to have two amazing guests on
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  here that I've been wanting to have for quite some time.
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  So I'm going to actually do something different today. I'm going to actually
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  have each one of them introduce the other, which is kind of cool.
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  I will formally tell you who they are. So on my left, you're probably,
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  you're right when you're watching it at home, is my niece, Ariana.
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  She is back. She doesn't remember, but she's been on this platform before.
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  And of course, her best friend Addie is with her. Addie, I know her because
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  she has actually taught Ariel in ballet.
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  Of course, Ariana too. But that's how we know each other. And it is truly an
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  honor to have them here because we're going to be doing a brand new series.
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  The series is called Reach for the Stars. And the cool thing about this is that
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  you're going to see them grow because they're going to be back multiple times
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  to do a how's it going type of category.
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  With that being said, Ariana, I'm going to give it to you. Please explain who is with you today.
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  So today I have my caretaker, my babysitter, my best friend.
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  My almost neighbor in college wing.
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  And yes, this is Addie.
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  Welcome to Have Faith, Let It Begin. Thank you.
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  That's right. We got to get some applause in there. I'll add that later in the
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  whole pre-post production.
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  Addie, I know my niece, but not everybody else does. So by all means, go ahead. Who do we have?
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  Well, this is Ariana and she's an amazing, beautiful dancer.
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  She's currently on the mend from a little injury.
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  But that's okay because she'll be back and better than ever before she knows that.
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  And you know what? She did that, Addie. you did that perfectly because I was
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  going to tell everybody that they probably didn't understand what that cold
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  caretaker thing was, which is fun, which is great because they're probably like,
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  what the heck did happen to her?
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  So yeah, so I had a surgery. I won't get into her what exactly it was,
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  but it was an injury and she's back with us and she's on the men's and Addie,
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  her best friend is taking care of her, which is what all good friends should do.
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  Well, we got two interesting parts here to this whole dynamic.
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  Ariana is now going into her third year of college and Addy is going in for her first year.
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  So I guess what I want to do is start this way. As somebody who's graduated
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  college with a business degree and minored in ecology, don't worry about dogs
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  in the background. It's all good.
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  They won't even hear it because I saw your reactions. You're like, no, it's all good.
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  So as somebody who's graduated and knew what they kind of wanted to do before I got into college.
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  And then when I graduated, I went into the field, but ultimately didn't stay
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  in the field. I went into medical field and podcasting.
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  I want to ask you a question and you can go whoever wants to go first.
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  At the stage that you are in right now, I guess we'll start with Addy because
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  she's just getting started.
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  Where do you see yourself in the next three years and are you 100% confident
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  that you may be in that field in three years from now?
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  Well, right now, my major end goal is to be like a casting director or producer
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  or whatever it is for Broadway, TV, film, whatever it is. My major right now is business.
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  So right now, matching up with my end goal, but I honestly, I would have no
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  problem switching it if like I did an internship or whatever and I had a mentor
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  tell me that something else would be.
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  Good to know. And I did not know that you were into business.
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  So if you do need an internship, I'm going to say this right now on the air,
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  I would be more than happy to give you a platform to kind of see the backgrounds
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  of what we do here and help you out if you need it, okay?
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  So that's available to you. And I'm not just saying that because I'm on the air.
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  I mean that. So absolutely.
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  So that's awesome. Business is an important thing. I would like to point out
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  that I have seen Addie also perform and she's an amazing dancer as well.
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  So I want to make sure that we don't lose track of that.
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  Ariana, you've been in school three years. When you went into school,
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  what was your major? And are you still there today?
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  Major originally was dance and I'm staying with dance, but my minor has changed.
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  I wanted to stay in the dance industry and like kind of keep adding more dance elements to my major.
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  So I decided to do a musical theater minor.
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  I was like, you know what? No, actually, because I need more than just to dance.
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  Clearly with my injury speaking, you just never know what's going to happen.
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  So you want to have any backups as you can, which is not a problem.
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  So I start in the fall, I'm actually starting my new minor, which is in social
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  work. And I plan to get my master's in social work.
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  Can I ask what changed? Can I ask what changed that?
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  Because I didn't even know as your uncle, I didn't know that that changed.
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  What made you go into that direction? Was it always in the back of your mind?
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  Or is that something that you just kind of fell into recently?
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  Well, I've always wanted to work in like schools if
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  that came with like being a dance teacher at a school
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  or you know something like that but my neighbor Stephanie got
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  her master's in social work and I just really
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  enjoyed the whole like way that she would speak about
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  how she wants to counsel work at school still and
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  still be able to like chat with kids but still like work with students
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  and all that so I just I felt like that would be a cool thing to do I'm also
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  a licensed hairstylist so I feel like counseling in that realm too could also
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  work because you are someone's therapist when you like put them in their chair
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  and you like chat with them. You know what I mean?
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  So I feel like- No, that makes sense. And you know, in both fields and all the
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  fields too, especially with all due respect that you are females, all underpaid.
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  And that's something I advocate for here that we should have women be paid for
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  what they're capable of.
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  And if they have the same, you know, the same platform as men,
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  they should be paid equally, if not more, depending on their work ethic.
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  So, and that's important. So now Addy, with your business degree,
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  what made you, what inspired you to be in business?
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  Well, originally I was going to do dance too, because I grew up dancing just
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  like Ariana did at the same studio, obviously.
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  And so at our studio was very much performance heavy. So I fell in love with
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  that and I wanted to do that for the rest of my life. I was just,
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  that's the only thing I knew.
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  And also my parents are performers and did that professionally so
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  I sort of just followed in their footsteps and then
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  I was like well I haven't even
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  explored anything else like what if there's something else that
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  is better fit for me and especially
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  once like I've started getting closer to having to audition and realizing like
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  how much work it was going to be how much I was going to have to sacrifice I
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  was just like I've done it my whole life but I don't know if I really love it
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  enough to put all my energy into it for like literally the rest of my life so
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  i but i knew i still wanted to like stay in that.
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  General community because it's like a really rewarding community,
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  part of. So I wanted to stick with that. So I was sort of like thinking of what
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  other things I could do, but still be in that business.
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  And then I came across casting, which is actually a dream that I had when I
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  was like nine, 10, I told everyone I wanted to be a casting director.
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  So I sort of started back to that and I researched what casting directors majored
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  in and found people to look up to, found a bunch of different casting companies
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  to follow and like see what their employees do.
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  And most of them did business majors. So that's what I do. So there's some,
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  yeah, there's some background to it.
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  I think that business management or business, especially with the fields that
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  you're both going to be going into, you kind of have to have that background
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  because you're going to need to know, you know, when it comes to contracts,
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  you're going to need to know how to save your money, how to balance,
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  you know, all those things. So yeah, I can get a little hectic.
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  And even though I didn't fall into the sales industry, which I love doing.
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  I didn't stick with that because I do podcasting and I'd be doing even in ministry
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  school, knowing what I have to do later.
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  Business comes back somewhere, fashion, and not so much as math,
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  thank God, but business, business is important.
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  All right. So what advice, you know what, let me start with a hard question.
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  And if you don't want to answer it, you don't have to.
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  Do you think high school prepares you for college?
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  I'll start I was just going to say yes and no for me too Go ahead I want to hear you,
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  I'm going to say no, because I think that when I was in school,
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  with all due respect to the guidance counselors, I think they were not,
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  they didn't have enough time to get to know you the way I think that we should.
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  So they were more of doing the checks and balances and they weren't trying to
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  figure out what does Angel really like to do?
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  You know, what does Angel really, and I don't think I've ever really got asked.
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  They just used to say, well, you're great at math, stay in math.
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  Guess what? I struggled with math in college.
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  So I wasn't a math major that I was in high school, right?
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  But nobody ever asked me and said, what do you want to do? Because I've always
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  wanted to be an announcer and I wanted to be a psychologist and I wanted to
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  be a businessman. So two of the three came true.
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  So yeah, that's the no. The yes, social experience.
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  But for me back then, I didn't have cell phones. I didn't have. We just had beepers.
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  So the social aspect of it played a factor in learning how to articulate,
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  how to talk with people. I don't know if I would have survived in this world
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  today with the social media.
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  I think I really would have been like all over social media and less on my academics.
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  That's mine. All right. Who's next? They're like, I ain't following that.
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  Me personally, I was all over the place in high school and didn't know what track I wanted to go.
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  Like there were so many different options. And I think right before entering
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  my junior year of high school, I had to make the decision on whether or not
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  I wanted to go to BOCES and like fulfill,
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  My like dream of just doing hair getting my license Kind of going in that direction,
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  but I also like on the side wanted to be a teacher I also wanted to do dance.
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  There were so many things,
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  So I feel like you said, they kind of just didn't get to like know me very well.
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  And they just kind of saw my grades and my GPA and were like,
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  you know, BOCES is actually for people that have lower GPAs than you.
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  So we don't think you should be going on that track.
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  And I'm like, but why does it have to be that way? You know what I mean? Yeah.
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  I like stuck it out and I was like, you know what? No, because that's,
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  that's just not how it is. It's a career.
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  It's a job. It's still like, you're still making money. You're still getting
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  paid. Like, we don't need to compare GPAs just because of all this stuff.
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  So I had a really hard time kind of like working with my guidance counselors
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  to make an actual decision as to what I wanted to do in high school, let alone college.
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  Like, I feel like in college, when I decided to tell my guidance counselors,
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  I switched it around. I want to do dance.
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  They had no idea how to help me because they don't know what dance is about.
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  That's so interesting. I don't have a guidance counselor that was a dancer. You know what I mean?
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  Yeah, like no of dance. It's really hard to get help.
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  And I feel like with our even when Addy was like in the middle of deciding the
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  process itself is so difficult. And you don't have that help prior.
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  You're like underwater looking for help. You have to just ask and ask and ask and ask.
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  And I feel like that was probably the hardest because you just you want to ask
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  for academic help from your guidance counselors. They can't help you.
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  So you're trying to ask a mentor.
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  And it's just no one knows. So everything is just like chaotic and like dumpster fire.
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  But yes, on the same side, the school aspects, I'm very socially,
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  which is kind of, you would probably not know this, but in the beginning of
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  high school, I was very quiet, eight-long teacher.
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  I never wanted to eat with the actual students. I was just afraid.
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  I had a lot of social anxiety.
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  A lot. I did. Do sometimes.
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  But I feel like now that I'm working and like have to meet people,
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  I have to make connections. It's a lot easier.
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  In the beginning, it was hard. So I feel like, you know, more and more years
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  of high school kind of like builds you up and you're like, OK,
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  I can actually make friends outside of here and be OK.
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  See, for someone like you, though, and I think that we're going to get to Addie's as well answers.
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  But for someone like you, they just said that. And I appreciate you being honest
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  about it because there's people out there that they're going to listen to and
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  say, wow, it's not just me.
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  I think that this is where the pros and cons come.
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  I think that in the industry that we're in now, because of social media,
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  it may actually help you become more sociable, right?
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  There's pros and cons. There's negatives and positives. And I want Addy's perspective on this too.
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  Do you feel that we were not pushed enough in high school?
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  For example, when I was talking about the guidance counselor,
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  I remember, I'll never forget, sitting in the office and I had straight A's in math, straight A's.
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  And then the following year, they were like, Now, this terminology may not exist
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  anymore. I was in non-regions, right?
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  Classes. And then they, okay, right? So then they went, you're going to do sequential
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  1A, which is the next step.
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  So I went in, which is like a regions, let's call it that way.
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  And my grades started to slip. So then they pulled me in and said,
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  look, your grades are starting to slip.
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  Mind you, we're talking about Bs, very like border Bs, almost C pluses.
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  They put me back into non-regions so I can get straight A's.
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  But that doesn't help me. That didn't help me. It didn't prepare me to become
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  challenged. So I wasn't challenged enough.
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  And lastly, to point out to what you said about mentors and not being pushed
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  and just kind of like going with the flow,
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  I also felt, and I'll say this so that you don't put you guys under the bus,
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  I felt that the people that had straight A's and were always in the in crowd, quote unquote,
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  got help or got that letter of recommendation and the extra,
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  you know, stuff to get them into those applications where people like you and
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  I struggle to figure out where the heck do I go with this?
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  And it was up to mom and dad and you to figure out where to go.
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  Right. And they've only, they've done college a while ago. Right.
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  Be like, I'm not trying to.
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  It's true. It was so different too when they used to apply for colleges.
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  Yeah, they drove children to high school. I remember. Yeah, I know.
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  It's different now. So it's like how I can't always rely on my parents to help
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  me with, something that they might not be familiar with.
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  So it's like you expect that kind of from your guidance counselor, just a little bit more.
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  But mentorship slash parent to ship. We make up words here. So that's the way it is.
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  Now, Addy, you know, let's, let's, let's talk about you now.
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  The same question. Do you think high school prepared you for college?
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  I think definitely the social aspect, like you both were saying,
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  I mean, I've always been a very extroverted person. Like from the time I was
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  in like preschool, this is nice.
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  Hey, everybody's gonna have a different answer. And I love that. Yeah. So I,
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  I never had a problem like putting myself out there, but
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  I do know that if I didn't have school I
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  would be an extrovert in like all the wrong ways
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  like I would just have absolutely no like social awareness at
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  all so I feel like that definitely helps being socially aware
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  like knowing how to read a room like that sort
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  of thing like it comes with being in classrooms of
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  like all different kinds of people for 12 years
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  yeah so great answer I feel like without that
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  i would be still extroverted because
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  that's just how i was how i was hardwired but like
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  only like socially awkward if
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  that makes sense like this is why i like doing formats like this because what
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  it does is it allows us the opportunity to see different sides i don't i don't
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  want everybody to have the same answer to a certain degree you know it then
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  it becomes a boring show we're gonna actually we're at the 19 minute mark we're
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  gonna do a two-parter on this so So for everyone out at home,
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  I want you to stay tuned. They're going to be back for another episode tomorrow.
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  And we're going to cut it here and be back.
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  Teenagers becoming adults. And more importantly, reaching for the stars.
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  We have all of us here at Have Faith, Let It Begin. I want to thank Addie.
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  I want to thank Ariana for being here.
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  And part two is going to be tomorrow. So stay tuned. They're going to be back.
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  For us, we're going to keep recording. And it's like we never stop.
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  But for you guys, you're going to have to wait 24 hours. So we hope to see you soon.
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  And never forget. But, you know, have faith and let it begin.
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  We'll be back tomorrow, guys. I'm Ariana.
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  And I'm Addy. And you're listening to Have Faith, Let It Begin. And it starts right now.