Throughout the past few months, I have changed so much as a person. And not only have I changed but I've evolved, developed, and truly blossomed into the person that I was meant to be. And as someone who is a very determined, stubborn person, all of this change was terrifying. Throughout high school, I truly thought that I knew what I wanted.
I had a certain career path that I truly believed in. I was happily heading down a path that countless people had walked before me and I was eager to check all of the boxes. I was the girl with a plan and I really thought that I knew who I was.
I was the girl who everyone knew was going to be a teacher. But the thing about it that nobody knew is that I really didn't want to go into the education system despite how much I tried to convince myself otherwise. I always told myself that I was going to get my degree and then go teach in another country.
And whenever I got back from the Peace Corps, well, that part I didn't know. See, I've always had a part of me that cringes at the mere thought of conformity. For years, I tried so hard to convince myself that I was going to graduate college, marry a man, and have children. I truly believed that this was the path I was supposed to follow and that I would be fulfilled.
This was the path that society and particularly, my religious community laid out for me. And for my first semester of college, all of those things persisted. I still wanted to go into the education field, my passions were all in the same places, and I was pretty much an elevated version of my high school self.
A little into the start of my second semester of college, I realized that I was in a rut in life. I was stagnant and not changing at all in the ways that people always attribute to their years in college. And this is not to say that I wasn't happy with who I was because I'm very much still the person that I've always been.
All of the ways that I've changed in the past few months are honestly a pretty natural progression of growing up and figuring out who you are. College is so liberating because, for the first time in your life, you are in control of your future.
No longer are you defined by who your parents and society tell you that you need to be?
I have finally found people in my life who encourage me to be myself and only that. I didn't even realize that I needed people to tell me that it was okay to change. I needed someone to grant me permission to realize that it's okay to not know what you want.
It is completely okay to come into college as a confidently declared major and change your mind a few months into your degree program. At the end of the day, you don't owe anything to anyone.
It doesn't matter if you got all of the education scholarships in high school or if you told everyone that you were going to be an engineer and switched to art. The only thing that you are responsible for is making yourself happy.
I know that I don't want to spend four years and fifty thousand dollars on something that I no longer love. And I'm not going to lie, going back home after you have had a pretty drastic change in life is scary and sometimes a little painful.
Especially when the path that you were on was so ingrained in your identity for many years. But at the end of the day, I am so much happier now than I ever was before. And as cliche, as it sounds, I never knew that I could be this happy. So if you're waiting for someone to tell you that it's okay to change your mind, I'll happily tell you that. It's okay to change your mind and, in fact, it's healthy.
