A Person with Self Belief, Who Goes All Out At Realising His Dreams
I would like to introduce myself as a person who has a great deal of self belief and one who follows his heart and chases his dreams. There are a couple of life changing experiences that I have had, which made me believe that, if you have the desire and the will to achieve something, then nothing can stop you.
In order to understand these key moments of my life, we need to go back a couple of decades. It was September 1990 when I witnessed my elder brothers awake at late night, watching a sport that had two men smashing balls across a low height net, and the scores of that match went from 15 to 30 to 40.Being a seven year old kid, I was totally dazed as to what was happening. It was the US Open Tennis, men’s singles final. That was the beginning of my affection towards sports, and more so towards tennis.
Years went by and I started keeping track of the sport, the players and the statistics involved. After completing my junior school, I went for a Bachelor’s in Chemistry in 2001, away from home. Being alone and away from the family I found comfort in spending time writing about tennis on various websites. As with any tennis fan, I had my favorites. Top of the list was Martina Hingis. I was so much in love with writing on tennis that I wanted to shift gears and be a professional tennis reporter. But having gone so far in one career, it was hard for me to change tracks, and even harder to convince my parents, who wanted me to become something big in the field I was in. Hence my studies and posts on tennis went on simultaneously, but I kept a desire to achieve something in the field of online sports reporting.
It was mid 2004 and through the Martina Hingis unofficial fan site, http://www.hingis.org, I got a job as an online tennis reporter for teamwta.com. A dream had come true. Here I was, taking online interviews of players, whom I use to follow as a fan. Analyzing tournaments and matches, whereas before I use to read analysis of others. Felt like I was in the box seat.
Although this experience may not sound very dramatic, but for a person like me, who was born and brought up in a society where people valued engineers and doctors, compared to an online journalist, to have been able to realize the dream of one day reporting on something which I loved watching, has been a life changing experience. I worked for the website for about a year.
The second critical moment of my life is very much linked to the one above.
During the intervening period between me finishing the tenure at teamwta.com and pursuing further studies and a job into management, I realized that I was missing being a part of the sports fraternity. Hence I decided to move on with my life and researched for a place where I could get best of both worlds. That is to reach a city where I can further my knowledge and skills for the work I was doing, and at the same time have a shot at tennis reporting once again.
I zeroed in on Tampa. Why? The answer lies in one name, Nick Bollettieri. During all these years of following tennis, from Agassi to Courier, from Hingis to Nicole Vaidisova, the name of Bollettieri featured as common. I found out that his academy is just 50 miles from Tampa, and the cream of this sport reach there at some point of their career to seek guidance. Hence I regarded the academy as a hub for tennis.
But, now came the difficult part, getting through all the tests and interviews in order to be at one of the universities at Tampa. It became even tougher when I messed up the GMAT. Everyone around me told that Tampa was beyond me, but I did not give up and gave my heart and soul in order to clear all the hurdles. After toiling through for about a year, I managed to do what many around me thought, was unachievable. I am at the University of South Florida in Tampa and am living my dream.
To conclude, I have some words for those who have dreams but are afraid of chasing them. Guys, just do not give up, no matter who you are or where you are from, just give your best shot at realizing your dreams and I assure you, more often than not, you will be successful.