At the same time, I often wonder if things happen for a reason. Was I meant to have met the people who are so important to me now? Would circumstances have allowed us to meet even if my life had gone a different way?

I don’t really know that things are necessarily “meant to be.” I can’t say either way. I believe in a higher power, but I don’t pretend to understand it.

Every now and then, I wonder what would have happened if I had remained a Music Ed major in college. I famously (among those who knew me anyway) changed majors four times in college, quite unsure about what exactly I was supposed to be doing.

Ultimately, I left the music department because I saw the art of singing in a different way than the vocal faculty. I also wasn’t sure that I really wanted it badly enough to give my all to singing.

There are times I question my choice. Sometimes, I’m talking to performers in a musical about their passion, and I feel that twinge of what I used to feel when I thought about singing. Sometimes I’m singing a song in choir, and I think of how I would feel, standing in front as the director. What directions would I take with the music? How would I interpret that rest?

I always come back to music. No matter what emotion I am feeling, I can always find a song that perfectly captures it in a melody. Sometimes I need to sing as a sort of release, to convey my emotions in a way I can’t do with actions. Music is its own language for me, a language that I think is both universal but exclusive at the same time. I have been moved by music in ways I haven’t been able to accomplish otherwise.

Ultimately, though, I haven’t given up singing. I changed my major and went a completely different path, but I still have music in my life. So I suppose I don’t really have to think about the what ifs.

Although we can’t change the past, one thing over which we have some measure of control is the future. Yes, things have happened that we can’t change. But we can make choices to decide the direction we are going in the future.

On Sunday, my sister, Julia, graduated from high school. She goes to a private Catholic school, so it was a smaller ceremony than mine was. I was very proud of her. She graduated with honors and National Honor Society.

The Most Rev. Joseph Pepe hands Julia her diploma after her name is called at her graduation on June 7.

I was thinking that a couple of weeks ago when I was at UNLV preparing for an alumni event. I graduated from UNLV two and a half years ago now, but so much about the campus has changed in just that short amount of time.

There’s a new, shiny-looking student union– so much different than the small building I could walk through very quickly that had only a couple of places to eat, a tiny arcade and some seating areas. The one I went to almost daily is gone now.

There’s also a new engineering building, also much larger than what was there before. I haven’t been through it yet (no reason to), but I have seen it from the outside. It looks so foreign sitting there. My memories of UNLV don’t include that building.

And, most exciting and jealous-inducing of all for me is the new urban affairs building. Beautiful, big and modern, that building holds all the possibilities I dreamed of when I was a journalism student at UNLV: convergence labs for future journalists to learn about the full spectrum of media possibilities; TV studios big enough to rival any in the state; classrooms with plenty of interactivity; real offices for professors… so much that I didn’t have when I was a student there. And only two years later.

This type of change is not uncommon in all of Las Vegas. Whenever my friend David visits, there’s always a point when we’re driving along and we pass something he hasn’t seen. That happened fairly frequently after her returned from his mission with the LDS church, which was again two years long.

I suppose I take for granted somewhat how quickly things go up here. When I moved to the master-planned community where I live now, many of my friends who had gone off to college hadn’t even heard of the place. The area I live in is a booming part of town, but there are still wide open spaces.

When I moved into my house, there was a massive dirt lot across the street. Not two months ago, construction started popping up. A condo complex is going in, as is a strip mall with a much-needed grocery store. It seems like every week some business is opening within walking distance that I have been anticipating: a Dunkin Donuts, a sushi restaurant, a clothing boutique, a couple of pizza places, a 7-eleven. This week, I found out an ice cream place is a one-  to two-minute walk from my front door.

The good thing is that, for the most part, a lot of these things aren’t replacing something else, but are being built on existing land. At UNLV, the engineering and urban affairs buildings replaced parking. The student union replaced the existing building and some more parking (don’t know where all those cars are going).

As I am getting older and more sentimental, I find that I am sad at how quickly the scenery changes. I’m happy for the new possibilities, but I’m a little sad that something can change so quickly. The UNLV my sister may attend looks so much different from the UNLV I attended.