This one goes out to you,

The little girl coloring outside the lines,

The inquisitive girl wanting to create beautiful portraits like her father,

The diligent girl who turns every assignment into an art project,

The meticulous girl who paints the same tree a hundred times until she gets it just right,

The dedicated girl who stays up late each night doing crafts.

To the hopeful girl in love with art, this one's for you.

I am sorry that you got left behind.

Nearing the end of my college career a professor recently asked me what I had wanted to be when I grew up. This is a common question that I have probably answered a thousand times, but maybe because now I am almost "grown up", this was the first time my answer really affected me. When I was young I had many aspirations. I was going to be the first female president, star in my own Disney Channel show, be a world famous singer, all while being a haircut lady (I didn't know the proper terminology back then). But as I grew up I really took a liking to art. I loved to draw, paint, make crafts and play with clay; I basically turned everything into an art project. I would be an artist.

Then there came the time when it became apparent that I was "smart", meaning I was very good at taking tests. I excelled at reading, writing, and mathematics. Suddenly, I felt a great pressure to do things that would foster my academic intelligence rather than my passion for art, and I obliged. I took increasingly challenging classes like calculus, honors biology, and AP physics rather than the classes I felt would be more fun like ceramics, painting, and even wood shop. There seemed to be a dichotomy in myself and in the opinion of others that while art was good and important, it was not a discipline in and of itself. And as I graduated high school at the top of my class with academic honors, this idea followed me to college.

And now here I am almost done with college. Almost grown up. Now I worry that in another fifteen years I'll look back on my college-aged self, her goals, dreams and aspirations- and I'll have to apologize for leaving her behind as well.