Two years and one month ago, I first stepped foot onto the campus of Truman State University as an incoming freshman. I was excited, terrified, ready, completely unprepared, but more than anything else, I was naive. I walked into my first dorm room, met my first roommates, and went to my first class thinking that, at 18 years old, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the next sixty years of my life. I was wrong.
At 18, I knew a lot of things. I knew how to drive a car. I knew I wanted to go away to college. I knew, without a doubt, that I wanted to be a high school history teacher. I was so certain of this fact that, when people told me about how commonplace it was for college students to change their majors, I would only laugh at these kids who seemed so directionless and unprepared. The choice was a simple one for me. I had always loved history. As a kid, I used to want to watch "Liberty Kids" before "Dragon Tales," much to my siblings' dismay, and I grew up reading instead of playing on an iPad. My love of history combined with the economy, lack of jobs in the history field, and comfort with children made my decision seem like such a simple one. I was sure that my decision was not only the best one I could have made, but also a decision that would change the course of my life forever.
Fast forward a year. I had survived freshman year, four history courses, a research project that took me all over the United States, and I still was sure I had made a good decision a little over a year before. I had, however, added an English major after taking a class with a young professor who made me fall in love with books all over again. Little did I know that in a few short months a history class would break me.
I had always heard about those classes, you know, the ones that you are required to take but make you hate everything. The one that inevitably has a horrible professor with a terrible teaching style, put there only to “weed out” the students who didn’t want it enough or were not smart enough to make it. Mine was first semester sophomore year, US History 313. This class pushed me over the edge. I cried about this class, was angry about it, questioned if I was good enough because of it, and was told very bluntly by the professor that I would never amount to anything. Talk about breaking a student, this class had me on the verge of the most insane meltdown to ever happen in my life and dropping out of college. The only thing keeping me sane was my literary theory class with an amazing professor. This one class, and all of the freedom it gave me to express myself, and be rewarded instead of punished for it, is the reason I am still in college.
When I look back now, a year after dropping my history major and telling the worst teacher I have ever had goodbye, I realize how silly I was at 18. I didn’t have my life all figured out, hell I still don’t have my life figured out. I was so naive to think that everything would be a breeze and go according to my plan, and I’m so happy that it did not. Changing my major to English gave me expression. My professors support me, my classes interest me, and I am able to work with mediums that fascinate me. In my first two years of college I realized that people don’t change their major because they are directionless, they change their major because the direction that they thought they would head is wrong, because they found their passion, because they found the thing that they love more than anything else in the world. If you are on the fence about changing your major, don’t worry. Your passions will always pay off in the end. No one actually has their life figured out in college, and you don’t have to either. Do what you love and all the pieces will fall into place, always.
