For most college students, the real world is still a couple years down the road. For other students, it is something that they aren’t ready to think about yet.
For junior Lauren Lipinoga, however, the future is happening right now. Lipinoga, a human development major with a minor in health science, says that she set her career goals during her junior year of high school. She wants to follow in the footsteps of Jan Ables-Register, her high school guidance counselor, a woman who inspired Lipinoga greatly. Register showed Lipinoga what it means to help others prepare for their future by showing her how to prepare for her own. Now Lipinoga hopes to do the same for others.
People should see the future as an open opportunity instead of something to be afraid of, she says. Lipinoga is doing everything she can to have experience for her own future. She takes every opportunity she can to do this.
“I’m gaining all this experience,” she says. “I’ve had many opportunities that have helped in order to set me up for a good future.”
Right now, Lipinoga works as a Navigator for the Compass in the CampusCenter. This is in addition to playing intramural sports, working as an usher for ice hockey games and working as a tutor. That’s not all she does, though. She is an active member of Alpha Phi Omega, the community service fraternity on campus, and she works for Mentor Oswego, a program similar to Big-Brother, Little-Brother.
“I need to have practice if I’m going to serve as an example for others,” she says, shrugging off her rigorous work load.
Out of everything, though, Lipinoga says she loves working for the Compass most. She gets to help students by critiquing their resumes, job and scholarship applications and cover letters. She also helps students search for internships, volunteer opportunities and graduate schools. Students come to her to get organized and off of their feet.
“I think it’s a great thing that I wake up in the morning and say, ‘Oh, I’m going to the Compass!’ It’s not a drag…I get to help people chose what they want to do in their career paths,” Lipinoga says.
Being so involved hasn’t always been easy for Lipinoga, however. When she was a freshman in high school, Lipinoga was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. Lipinoga was always an athlete so for her, this changed everything. She had to change her eating habits, her workout habits and her social habits. She has to wear an insulin pump, which affected her self-esteem greatly during her teen years.
Now, however, Lipinoga jokes a lot about her diabetes, though her condition is still difficult to manage at times. When people ask her about her pump, she laughs and says, “It’s my iPod!” before explaining it to them.
“It makes me realize that I have to work at things in order to live a positive and fulfilling life. And the happier I am with my diabetes, the happier I am with my overall life,” she says.
Just two years after being diagnosed, Lipinoga faced another obstacle in her life. She was training for softball in Florida during her junior year of high school when she broke her leg. She was out of all sports for eight months, and ultimately missed the prime college recruiting season. As a result of this, she had to find other things to do because she couldn’t be an athlete anymore. This lead to her heavy involvement in clubs on campus a few years down the road. Now she loves getting involved more than anything.
Junior Jackie Maguire, a friend of Lipinoga, says that nothing has ever stopped Lipinoga from doing what she wants to do.
“Lauren is strong-willed, motivated, outgoing, caring and knows where she’s headed in life,” Maguire says. “She’ll persevere through any situation at hand.”