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Brains and Beauty

Exclusive interview with Miss Heilala 2007 Tessi Toluta'u and Miss Heilala 2006 Sina Nauahi.



[Photo: left: Miss Heilala 2007 Tessi Toluta'u and Miss Heilala 2006 Sina Nauahi]

PEM: What do you feel has been most empowering about being a young Pacific Islander?

Tessi: There are so many trials and tribulations that we face today as young people, but what is most empowering is the knowledge that we can do anything, there are no limitations. We live in a day an age where technology is at its highest peak and so there is no way that we can’t do something. There is always a way that we can do something it’s just a matter of how much motivation we have to do it. We have so many freedoms today that we can accomplish so many things. It is empowering for us to know that we are going to be the future generation, we don’t have as many limitations that our ancestors had before and this should empower us to want to do more and to be more successful, and lay the same foundations that our ancestors had done.

Sina: I agree with everything Tessi just said!

PEM: What advice do you wish someone had given you when you were younger?

Sina: When I think about it, I think that my mom gave me all the advice that I needed but I didn’t listen and I wish I would have listened more, so I guess someone would have pulled me aside and said “listen to your parents!!!”

Tessi: Sometimes when my parents give me advice it goes in one ear and out the other, but it always leaves an imprint in my mind. I think the most important thing that I wish I would have listened to my parents about was about education and the importance of doing really good in high school. I was overly involved in high school with extracurricular activities that it became more important than my academics and I look back at it now and I regret it because I could have received a full ride academic scholarship. Luckily with my extracurricular activities and my academics I was able to still get scholarships from, but I could have done better. High school was so easy, but it was just a matter of having good study skills and applying yourself. I am realizing now that I have so much time to do all the other things I wanted to do, but I only go through high school once and those marks reflect your six years of intermediate and high school years and you can’t go back and change it. Being in college now, I realize that if I would have done better in high school being in college would have been much easier, because the same habits that I had in high school I carry with me to college.

 

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