“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” -President Barack Obama

Recently, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on “The View” and said that growing up, her role models were older white men. She went on to say that you cannot wait for role models that look like you because if she would have waited for a black female Soviet-Specialist-she would still be waiting.

I used to search for people that inspired me that had similar stories to mine, but most often, I was disappointed. There was no one person that completely emodied everything that I hoped to do-besides myself. I moved to Los Angeles to orginally pursue acting and then fell into improv and sketch writing and somehow found my way back in college to pursue an English degree. Sometimes, I felt like I would not make an impact on the world like I once thought. I would look at other people’s stories and think that their stories were better. Their stories made “more sense”. My story was a bit scattered and chaotic, or so I thought. A friend recently told me, “Amanda, one day, someone will be telling you about how you were the one that inspired them. You are paving a way for people that has never been made before. Your story is important.”

All of our stories are important. No one else can make our dreams come true. We have to be the ones to realize those dreams for ourselves. We can’t let our lives pass us by as we wait for someone else to show us the way. We really are the ones that we’ve been waiting for, and the wait is finally over.