“I think that my biggest motivator in life is my future. Like I’ve seen how my parents grew up I’ve seen how my grandparents grew up, I come from a like a pretty small town, really poor family, just like I grew up, I wouldn’t say in poverty but not with a lot of money and so watching how like my parents struggled, and how my grandparents struggled is like a big motivator for me. So going to the future I want to be able to financially support myself and I want to be able to like branch out and travel and support my career and do all the things that I’ve dreamed of and not be held back because of the money aspect of things. So that keeps me coming to school and working towards college and my future and my career,” Kylie Abbey-Zani (‘24) said.

“I just committed to the University of Hawaii. I’ve traveled a lot my whole life, my step-dad’s in the Air Force, my mom lives in Italy so I’ve been to Italy, Czech, Austria, Poland, I’ve been all over Europe; but I’m really excited to check Hawaii off my bucket list. I’m commissioning into the Air Force after college so obviously I hope I get to do all the traveling that I want, specifically I want to go to Japan and maybe get stationed in Germany.”