I think I've always known that I didn't actually want to be a journalist.

I mean, I've always been a storyteller, so that's not the issue. When I was little, one of my favorite pastimes was reading. Afterwards, I would create elaborate narratives with my plastic animals. When I was 12, I created so many characters that I constantly had a five-subject notebook on me to draw and write about them.

Journalism as a career path didn't even occur to me up until I was in my sophomore year of college at the University of Minnesota and realized I needed to pick a major. Lo and behold, there was no undergraduate degree in creative writing (just a minor). And, of course, nothing but a single class in animation.

So, I gritted my teeth and chose the next best path.

Moving into my junior year, classes got more difficult. My dreamer days were over then, it seemed--no longer would I be able to spend hours tucked away in coffee shops with my own creations. No, now was the time to put that behind me, to embrace an internship, to pretend I was just as passionate about reporting as I was creating from scratch.

I thought majoring in journalism would change me. I thought that, as I grew, my brain would settle down with all the storylines it created when bored in lecture. I'd leave it all behind eventually, yeah? What use was this obsession with creating things if it just got in the way of everything I was working towards?

It's been six months since I declared my major. Absolutely nothing about me has changed.

My creative projects, if anything, have rebelled against this notion of me "growing up" and facing the reality that is my major and the career it has seemingly chosen for me. Doodles of unicorns multiply on my assignments. New chord progressions pop into my head on the way to news-writing classes. I can't go a week without putting up written content for "Saligiare," the current fictional project that rules my brain.

Being artsy is who I am, as permanent as my height or shoe size. Yes, it is probably hurting my schoolwork; journalists are supposed to seek the objective truth. But if I stop telling stories, my depression takes over and I'm unable to make much of anything, based in reality or not.

Creating is as necessary for me as breathing. For anybody who has tried to stuff themselves into a college education that didn't quite fit, I'm sure you can relate. Beating back your true self can feel like a war sometimes.

But the moral of the story here, kids, is not some sort of be-true-to-yourself, major-in-what-you-love ideal. I'm not going to tell you to forget about capitalism and get screwed over by thousands of dollars of debt for a degree with which you'll struggle to find employment.

What I am saying is that if you're hoping your major will change you into some zombified lover of something other than what you know to be your calling, you're gravely mistaken.

Our passions have funny ways of coming back to haunt us, even when we try to ignore them. Keep that in mind when you're planning your future.