I started my freshman year of college as so many people do; excited, energetic, enthusiastic about my future and passionate about my major. By the beginning of my sophomore year, these feelings had waned. I was exhausted, I tried hard to be engaged in my field, but a nagging feeling of being out of place kept getting stronger and stronger.
But I, being my stubborn self, decided to fight past these feelings. There were things I still really enjoyed about my field of study: I liked being outdoors in nature, studying wildlife and plants. I enjoyed studying ecology and the more “macro” biology classes. But when it came to things like chemistry, physics and microbiology, I was getting nowhere fast and with nothing to show for it. Worst of all, I felt no sense of gratification or success at the end of each semester.
I Inherited my stubbornness from my father, who, in turn, inherited it from his mother. On both sides of my father’s family, people by the age of 75 are held up by not by their own physical strength, but by their sheer resistance to change. This is the same level of stubbornness I gained, and it was this stubbornness that kept me in a major I knew was wrong for me.
In what was supposed to be my senior year, I had hit rock bottom. I had begun to hate school, I was depressed, and I felt as though my life had lost any sense of purpose I had held on to the past three years. In short, I was miserable. That was when I finally started to listen to the little voice in my head that had long been speaking to me. “This is not the path you are supposed to follow! I have something else for you! Your plans brought you here, now it's time for My plans to pull you out!” I came to recognize this voice as God. Looking back, so many things that happened were signs that I was meant to change my major, such as my study abroad falling through.
So, I began to listen. The first thing was that I needed to rest and recenter my life. The best way to do this? Move to Hawaii and teach preschool of course! In what was supposed to be the final semester of my senior year, I got on a plane to Oahu and spent the most amazing 4 months following a better call on my life than the one I had taken upon myself three years before. I returned home and found myself among some of the most amazing people ever in a major that was more than perfect for me.
My new field of study, Media Communications with a focus on film production, was the perfect fit.I felt myself actually progressing towards a goal. I felt successful and finally, my feelings of doubt subsided.
Each of us, in my own opinion, have a specific place in the universe. That is to say, there is a youshaped hole in the world that you are meant to fill. I was trying to force myself into a hole in the universe that was not my shape. How do you fit a square peg into a round hole? The answer is that you must shave down the peg so that it will fit. That is exactly what I was doing. I was shaving bits of me away to try to make myself fit better where I thought I was supposed to go rather than pursue a major that would make me feel whole.
For those of you feeling doubtful about your major, don’t be afraid to listen to that voice. We seem to have shied away from the idea that we can change our minds. It is never too late to make a change.
