"What is college really about? Why am I here?" How many times has that gone through your head? Stumbling back into your dorm or apartment at 3am on a Saturday morning; waking up at 2pm that same Saturday afternoon; cramming during finals week... "Is it really worth all this stress?" How about that one. This spring, I will be entering my second semester of college, and this whole first semester has been full of thoughts that wonder questions that I'm not sure will ever be answered. I feel like as a freshman, we are all stumbling around just trying to get our grips on something- anything to stabilize ourselves from the drastic change of responsible-less high school and living with our parents, to a college setting where there's no one to take care of ourselves, and for once, we have to do it mostly on our own. Scary. New friends, new teachers, trying to figure out what to expect from our new classes, dorms?, roommates?!, having to feed yourself every single meal and do your own laundry; insanity.
And on top of all of this trying to figure out the ultimate question, "What do I want to do when I grow up?" I'm a younger sibling, so I had the benefit of watching my older brother go through the torture of trying to figure out the rest of his life at age eighteen before I had even entered high school. While I watched, the cocky ignorant younger brother that I was, rubbed it in his face that I had my plan all set and I was only fourteen. I knew what I was going to be, I knew how I was going to get there, my plan was all set in stone: I was going to be a graphic artist and attend RHISD... until it changed a couple months after making this ridiculous statement and I wanted to be a professional musician... and then it changed about ten more times where I discovered the broad range of careers that could consume my adult life and suddenly I went from becoming an artist/musician all the way down the spectrum to becoming a physicist and/or an engineer... and all of this was before I even applied for college. Now that I'm actually here, I'm undeclared and really, I have no idea what I want to be, or what I want to do with the rest of my life; in the same shoes my big brother was in not too long ago. But as I'm slowly seeing the messy cloud called confusion, as he did, I am also beginning to realize that there are very few of us who do truly know. The elderly, adults, young adults, teens... most of us have absolutely no idea, and you know what... It's no big deal.
"I've learned something about stress. Stress leads to more stress." Don't fret. We will all figure something out. That's what the first few years of college are for. Hoping that we find an interest that sticks for the rest of the four years that we're there, so we can hopefully find enough time to take the right classes to get a degree in it. Remember, it's not necessary for all of us to know going in, half the reason for being there is to figure it out...
No comments:
Post a Comment