I can't Believe it's all over now...

Natalie Woo

Communications major Victoria University, New Zealand

About a year ago when I was starting my junior year at UHH, I decided that I needed to come up with an answer as to what I want to do after college. I realized that I want to become a stand-up comedian. I love to make people laugh so much that I want to make a career out of it. I started to tell friends in my classes because I felt if I kept my aspiration to myself, it would be easy to not be held accountable and give up my dream premature. The amount of support and encouragement I received from my classmates was unbelievable! Over the past year, I have made small moves to work toward my dream. I took a creative writing class in Hilo to push me to be a better writer so that I could get over the fear of being so critical of my own writing. Now, I jot my ideas down in a notebook or my phone. But other than that, I had never been on stage or performed any of my bits/skits for other people. Before coming to NZ, I made it a goal of mine to get on stage and perform some of my comedy at least once before I left. Long story short, my second week in NZ I saw a flyer at a bar that advertised NZ Comedy School. I enrolled in the course, and finally got on stage for the first time ever! It went extremely well and so many of my friends came out to support me. I met some amazing comics from so many different backgrounds and I couldn’t be happier or more proud of myself for doing that for myself.  

Another one of my most memorable events while studying abroad is the mid trimester break I had in August. I had originally planned to go on a road trip around the North Island and visit Queenstown in the South Island with a bunch of my study abroad mates. A week or two before the two week break, all of them changed plans and decided to travel to the Cook Islands instead. I was pretty sad and upset that they bailed on our plans so easily. However, I took the initiative and reached out to another girl who was studying abroad but I hadn’t hung out with much. She had the exact itinerary as I did and told me she planned on traveling solo since she didn’t know who else to go with. We became extremely close on our holiday, found out that we were very similar in so many ways, and became best friends. We both agreed that we were happy that we travelled with each other, rather than with a big group or solo. When we came back to Wellington, we started going out and doing more activities together since we became so close.