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My Reason for Studying in Japan

By Amelia Karnelia (Indonesia)
1st-year student, Graduate School of Policy Studies

“Dreams do not come true” is a kind of catchphrase commonly heard in the society in which I grew up. Because of that, I graduated from high school and came to Japan in 2008 without any particular dream. Studying together with students from various countries, I was so desperate in climbing over the high wall called “language and culture.” Strange, but in those moments I suddenly thought, “I’ll only live once, and abandoning my dreams sounds stupid. ”For the first time in my not-yet twenty years of life, I was seriously pondering my future path.

The answer I got was to work as a part of the United Nations, an international organization active all around the world. At that time, it was a dream standing in a terribly high place, and I kept thinking, “There is no way I can reach this dream.” But even so, I did not let go of the small light of hope I had. I was not brave enough to tell people other than my Japanese language teacher. Her reaction was very warm and I was encouraged by her. After entering college, all of my friends and teachers and even my family have been surprisingly supportive. Somehow, the catchphrase “Dreams do not come true” has changed into, “With hard work, maybe dreams may come trues. ”The first year of my college life was uneasy. Fully exhausted by my part-time job, university classes and financial problems, I have not had enough time for myself. At this difficult time, I fell into depression and thought, “This is too difficult for me. I cannot do it.

But people around me did not allow me to give up. My part-time job friends help me to forget my fatigue, my university friends fight together with me, and teachers give me a lot of advice and blow my concerns away. Here is the real moment where I feel like I am lucky to have so many people supporting me. It has already been more than four years since I came to Japan. I am still moving towards my dream with the support of the people around me. There is no guarantee that this dream will come true. But I do agree that regret for not challenging something will taste much worse than failing to challenge something at all. Even if I failed, I still believe that there is many good things to obtain from my effort made in chasing this dream. I, who believed in the idea of “Dreams do not come true,” have doubled and even tripled in growth since I came to Japan. I am now chasing a big dream of mine. Someday I would like to use my life story to tell something to the children around the world. That is if you only believe in your possibilities, and fight to achieve them, “Dreams do come true. ”