Anyone who knows me well knows that I’m not much of a risk-taker. I’m not an impulsive person, and except for when I’m arguing with my parents (sorry mom and dad), I think before I speak and act. I’m someone who knows what exactly I want, and is laser-focused and makes it happen.

Or so I thought.

In high school, I hated Math and Science. I hated my English classes. I loved Spanish. I loved History and Social Sciences. There were few exceptions to that rule. So when I applied to colleges with a declared major in Psychology, I was sure that was what I would spend the rest of my life doing. My parents both warned me that college changes you, and what I thought I wanted might not be what I actually want. But I’m an -extremely- headstrong person (yes, I admit it), and I took the “not me” approach. I know what I want, I thought. I’m a decisive person.

So I went into my freshman year with the attitude that I would somehow tough it out through my university required English and Math classes. I would do just enough to get the grades I wanted, and spend the majority of my time focused on the classes I truly wanted to be in.

But that didn’t exactly happen. I found myself, for the first time ever, liking an English class. It wasn’t something that I dreaded, and the words “thesis statement” and “analysis” no longer gave me quite so much anxiety. I wanted my essays to be my best possible work. I got frustrated when things weren’t coming together, not just because I wanted to be done and move onto the next thing, but because I knew I was on the verge of something. What high school had shown me to be a “typical” English class proved not to be true. My preconceptions were wrong. I was wrong.

Math was the same way… sort of. In high school, Math was a subject that was always an uphill battle. I hated it. No, I despised it. I would get so frustrated I would cry when I did my homework. It didn’t make sense to me, and considering the stupidity of the questions in math textbooks (who buys 1,000 watermelons?!), I didn’t see the real life applicability. After taking three math classes (my last three math classes. ever!), I can say that math doesn’t make me want to bang my head against a brick wall anymore. It will never be my favorite subject, and you will never see me declare a major or minor in Math, but it is something that I can do. And on rare occasions, when I actually understand what I’m doing, I like it. Math is methodical. In college, where life is chaotic, sometimes methodical is good. At least in small doses.

That being said, I still love psychology. Nothing fascinates me more than the complexity of our brain and how it affects every single aspect of our lives. Psychology is something that I know I want to pursue in the future. But I’m not sure if it is what I want to spend the rest of my life doing.

What I’m saying is that college changes and challenges you. What you thought you loved, what you thought you hated, you might be right… or you might be wrong. And that’s okay. It’s okay to change. It’s a good thing, really.

But more than that, it is okay to not know what you want. It’s fine to be indecisive and bounce back and forth between different disciplines. And it is fine to merge different disciplines. That is where innovation comes from.

So if there was one thing I learned my freshman year, it would be that I don’t know what I want. That used to scare me. Really scare me. I like to know what I want. It gives me direction, a road to follow. A specific set of steps to take. But here is the thing. I’m at an amazing school. My classmates and friends truly are some of the smartest, funniest, and most compassionate people I know. And I have professors who not only are at the top of their fields, but they truly care about their students and their learning. I would be stupid to start closing doors when college is supposed to open them.

I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I want to be doing when I graduate in three years. And I’ve learned to be okay with that.

In fact, it’s sort of exhilarating.