An artifact that describes who I am is water. I know that sounds odd and general, but throughout my entire life my favorite moments have involved water. When I was growing up, my family had a boat that we would use every weekend, and the best thing to do was to find a nice cove, and sit in the water. When I was 9, my family bought a lake house in Tennessee, which was the home of all my most precious memories. I can still hear the splashes and laughter bouncing throughout the cove, the swinging rope that caused so many injuries, and the water that connected it all. On my 10th birthday, my parents got me a wakeboard, which I didn’t know much about at the time. As the next summer began, wake boarding became my life. The feeling of weightlessness when I jumped the wake was indescribable and something I will always love. Over the next few years I learned some tricks but also had some nasty injuries, and I learned that water is definitely not soft. So moved on to wake surfing, and I could go on and on about all the water sports that I picked up: skiing, slalom, barefoot, etc., but that’s not the point. Water has always been the common denominator when I think about my happiest moments. But how did water inspire me to go into the field of International Business? Well, when I was 16 I went to a place called Interlaken, Switzerland, which is a city that is in a large valley between two lakes. The water was pure blue and icy cold, so naturally I had to wake surf on it. It was incredible. That experience opened my eyes to how many beautiful places there are on this earth, and how I could not miss out on any of it. Thus began my passion for travel. So, as I thought of how I could acquire a job that allowed me to travel, International Business seemed like an obvious choice. My desire to see the world (and all the water that it encompasses) is why I chose this career path and education.