Month: December 2017

Born in Georgia and raised in the valleys of California, Savanah Mecchella is working towards a degree in Liberal Arts (Occupational Therapy) while juggling her responsibilities as a member of the military police. Her decision to join the Army Corps happened on a whim: she was recruited right off high school and did not give it much thought at the time.

“Military was never in my mind, until a recruiter came and talked to me,” she said.

Although she didn’t think she would like the army life at first, Savanah decided to give it a go. Nowadays, she is glad she made that decision, because it has helped her achieve goals and do things she has never done before, such as overcoming physical limitations, practicing shooting and pushing herself in terms of discipline.

“I have gained a lot of strength from that, and training was an experience that pushed my limits like never before,” she said.

When asked about the current political scenario and the possibility of short-notice deployment, Savanah reinforces her loyalty to the troops.

“Although it’s not something that I look forward to, that’s what I signed up for,” she said. “I would just have to trust my fellow soldiers … and my unit, that everything is going to be OK. It’s something that we have to do.”

Keopuʻu Napolean-Ahn is wrapping up her first-year of taking prerequisite courses at KCC. The 18-year-old has goals of becoming a licensed practical nurse (LPN) and is hoping to fulfill this by getting into the Long Term Care Nurse Aide (CNA) and Practical Nursing (PRCN) program, which Napolean-Ahn said are considered the lowest programs to begin with on the nursing career ladder.

Napolean-Ahn’s decision in attending KCC was due to financial barriers and because of her belief that starting at a community college first rather than a university would result in more one-on-one support from those on campus. Napolean-Ahn does plan on transferring to UH Mānoa in the future and will determine if she will continue to pursue her nursing goals dependant upon how her experience turns out in the CNA and PRCN programs at KCC.

With some finals already handed out by professors on campus, Napolean-Ahn said that her finals so far are going well. She was delighted to see that she passed her finals for her Math 103, English 98 and English 100 class; she is now waiting to see her final grade for her History class.

Kiyomi Sanders is in her first year at KCC majoring in Liberal Arts with plans to eventually transfer to UH Mānoa. Sanders is hoping to double major in Classics and something in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics field.

With finals quickly approaching Sanders is worried about remembering everything for her cumulative exam in Math 135. Her math class is an accelerated course that covers a new section of the curriculum every week. So instead of having one math course over a 16 week semester, her class broke up into two math classes that are 8 weeks each.

Sanders expresses her concerns for exams, not necessarily because of the difficulty, but because of the exhaustion she is feeling as she nears the end of the fall semester.

“I’m not really worried about finals being really hard, I’m more worried about the fact that I’m so burnt out from the whole semester that I’m having a hard time doing really simple things.”