Forever Undecided

As anyone who knows me can attest, I change either my major or career path just about once a week.

Let's see...the college journey began with a focus in Public Relations, which I knew little of at the time, but when my advisor mentioned event planning as a possible direction within the field, I was quickly on board. Well, once I took a course in PR and learned the true ropes and the unfortunate news that event planning did not always mean creatively organizing wealthy women's parties and whimsical white weddings, I decided the field was not for me and moved on to look for other options. Approximate time of career path: 2 semesters.

With the possibility looming of sliding into the dreaded "undecided" status in the university record system, I quickly changed directions and settled on a career path very familiar to me and well within my grasp: elementary teaching. Thanks to the many years of watching my mom perform the feat, I felt I understood the job well and would learn to love it. After all, I did spend every afternoon of my own elementary days playing school in my mom's classroom and purchasing my own lesson plan books so I could get a head start on organizing my solar system lessons of the future. It was destiny, was it not? Apparently no. A few months later I realized perhaps this teaching thing was only a fall-back, my go-to job that I knew I could do, but not actually what I really wanted. And so another switch was in order. Approximate time of career path: 1 semester.

Thanks to UT's brilliantly planned and completely logical path to earning a teaching license (please note the sarcasm), my previous switch had landed me in the department of psychology, a field I had come to love during my freshman honors intro class. Although I was a bit cloudy on an exact path at this point, I felt psychology was still a logical choice, so I remained enrolled in classes with the future plans of possibly working with autistic children. Seems interesting enough, yes? I learned that psychology was indeed a good subject for my major if autism would be the name of the game, but I also started to discover the graduate school requirements and immense amount of research work I would have to do in order to achieve a level of education suitable for my goal. Suddenly I was going to become a scientist. But I hate science. Yeah, this will not work either. Approximate time of career path: I don't know, a month maybe?

Following this latest realization I dabbled in a few other ideas before reaching my current state. There was the human resources notion that called for the business minor, the switch to advertising that required a complete upheaval of major, the child and family studies possibilities that really got nowhere, and yes, I admit, even several returns to that trusted back-up I knew was always there: the teaching license.

Nothing fit the bill. Well great. Halfway through college and no direction whatsoever? It's a lovely situation, really. Except not. I recently, though, stumbled upon a love of mine, resurrected by an English class focused on The Lord of the Rings and the formation of this little baby here: my blog. I love to write. I do. It's crazy, but it's true. And hey, I don't think I'm half bad, either. Pair this hobby with summer's freedom to read my life away, and poof, we decide on the English minor. Great match, if I do say so myself.

And so, the whole point of this endless and probably quite boring and pointless post is to say that as of tonight, I am in serious contemplation of in fact turning my whole collegiate attention to the field of English by switching my major for the upteenth time to the subject. The more I learn about psychology and its scientific hypotheses and theories, the less I like it and the stronger my desire to change becomes. I spent a while reworking my schedule for the next four semesters and found the transition to be completely possible. So now the question is: is it really what I want? Shoot, don't make me answer that.

With an English background, I could choose to write my own novels, possibly work for a publishing company, maybe even be a magazine writer or editor...and the list goes on. If this endeavor continues, I'm hoping to find an internship with a publishing company next summer to get some experience and finally have me a "big girl job." For now, though, I will just continue praying for God to show me what He thinks is best and watching CPO for English classes to open up! Perhaps this latest hunch will last more than a week. How great would that be? :)