We can never predict the future. Life happens unexpectedly all the time. However, maybe things really do happen for a reason. We just haven't gone far enough in life yet to know the reason. Usually when we say life happens it is a phrase with a negative connotation, but life happens in good ways too. We just don't note those things because we have a bias toward negative things where we weigh the bad things that happen way heavier than the good things that happen.

I got rejected from pretty much every school I wanted to go to.

All throughout high school, I expected to go to UCI as a commuter, be an AVID tutor at my old high school, and become a leader at my church. Going away for college wasn't even an option I'd ever considered. I only applied to schools far away because it was safer to apply to more and there wasn't any harm in applying. I had the future pretty much mapped out. But that future was shattered when I got rejected from UCI and Chapman, the first-choice schools that actually would let me do everything I planned to do after I left high school. I was pretty shocked and didn't know what was going to happen next. I was so sure that I was going to get into UCI that I got complacent and stayed in my comfort zone.

Then came an email from the University of the Pacific.

It was the last email I received, and since pretty much every other school had sent me a rejection letter, I thought this was going to be the last of them. To my surprise, I actually got in. This put an option on the map that I had never considered. Luckily, I took it.

At first I was sad that I had to leave home and that I didn't get into my top two choices. However, I was also a little excited that I had the chance to get a brand new start at a place far away from home. The game plan then was to do well in school and then get into grad school. Of course plans never go according to the way we make them, and I am not doing well in school at all. But I have met people I wouldn't trade the world for. The people I've met here are definitely the reason why I got rejected from everything else. I'm so grateful for the friends I've made here and that was definitely not planned at all. I did think I was going to make friends but I never expected that my bonds with them would have been so strong and so special. I can't wait for the rest of life's pleasant surprises -- and maybe even the unpleasant ones as well.

"The bad things come suddenly with no warning but we forget that sometimes, that's how the good things come too" - Meredith Grey, "Grey's Anatomy."