by Katie Barton|Editor-In-Chief

Looking at the available language classes for freshman students, Aidan Sisneros felt like they were all too easy – which led him to pick Japanese 1 as his language credit. Little did he know that four years later, this choice would change his life. 

“I wanted to challenge myself because I thought all of those languages were a little too easy,” Sisneros said. “So I was like, you know what? I’m gonna go above and beyond. So I took Japanese and then I absolutely fell in love with it.”

After taking the language for all of high school Sisneros got the idea to attend a college in Japan from his Japanese teacher Yuka Kato. 

“I started researching the school,” Sisneros said. “I fell in love with the school, and then I applied for the scholarship through a vigorous process. And then eventually I got it.”

The process of receiving the scholarship first required Sisneros to actually get into the school.

“I had to write about three essays and then I had to do an SAT. I had to do an interview and then actually apply to the actual school itself,” Sisneros said. “So I had to get into the school first. And then if I got into the school, then I got the scholarship.”

Like any college application Sisneros also had to write several essays.

“One of them was just a personal statement and then the other one it was a freeform essay where you could just write about anything you wanted,” Sisneros said. 

 In college Sisneros plans to double major in both business and linguistics, specifically Japanese.  

“Seeing things in life we take for granted in a different perspective,” Sisneros said. “I think other languages have a way of expressing ideas that don’t really exist in English.”