In high school, we're always told that we need to decide what to do with the rest of our lives. The final two years of high school in particular seem to revolve around what college we end up going to and what field we want to major in. When I was sixteen years old I remember my counselor at school telling me that she was impressed that I was set on what I wanted for my future when I was only a junior in high school because some people don't have a plan for after high school at such an early time in their academic career. So, what was my plan after finishing high school?

The original plan was to study journalism at University of Georgia. I had it all planned out and I didn't think that a back up plan had been needed. Once I received my SAT scores, I discovered that a slight change in plan was necessary. My scores were below the minimum that the university accepts for entering freshmen, so I decided to apply to Georgia Southern University instead. I ended up happy with this decision and Georgia Southern still holds a special place in my heart today. But the change in school wasn't what made a back up plan necessary.

I had decided to join my school's yearbook staff my senior year of high school because I thought that it would prepare me for the journalism courses I hoped to study in college. This class did not go over well. My teacher had assigned me only one page out of the entire yearbook to work on when there were only thirty of us at most working on the entire thing. I worked on the page I had as much as I could to make sure it was perfect. I had ended up working on a page for a club that a close friend was in charge of, so I figured the one page I had would be good at the least. Close to the deadline for the yearbook however, I discovered that the teacher had assigned our editor to redo my entire spread for that page. At most, I think that the writing was mostly mine, but seeing that had me sure that I wasn't good enough to have a career in journalism. I entered college with no major, and with no idea what I wanted to do now that my dream had been squashed.

For the next few years, I went between different ideas for what to major in with little success. At first I thought about broadcast journalism because it seemed to be a decent idea and within the same field of what I wanted originally, then there was Spanish, then psychology, then management, and finally nursing. These different thoughts about a new major were not the only thing that made my first few years of college difficult, however. My first semester of college, my mother passed away a few weeks before finals. I couldn't go back to school, so I left Georgia Southern and took a year off from school.

When I started back to school in January of 2014, I had started at my local university at home. I decided on management for a major at the time because I figured that with a management degree, I could work anywhere. When I was at orientation for that first semester, I realized quickly that a business degree would not work for me. We were separated by major to be advised for our classes for that first semester, and when told all that we could do with a business degree, all I could think about was wanting to be with all of the nursing majors. With this feeling in mind, I changed my major to nursing with a minor in Spanish six months later feeling sure that this was the right choice for me.

I was so very wrong when I thought this. Though the minor in Spanish was definitely a good choice for me, nursing was not. My school has a very intense program for science majors, and I couldn't keep up with it. Every science class I took, regardless of how hard I tried, I had to retake. I would go home from class in tears feeling trapped because I thought that I had to stay in nursing. About a month ago, I finally started to give in. Maybe I was too stubborn to quit nursing, maybe I just didn't realize it wasn't my passion, but I finally had enough. I couldn't handle the stress anymore. For a short period of time I had no idea what to do. I reconsidered a Spanish major and a psychology major, I even thought about teaching, but I came up with nothing that I felt enough of a passion for to spend the rest of my life doing.

Around that time, a friend of mine talked to me about joining The Odyssey to be a content creator. I agreed to, thinking that at worst, I would have some form of a creative outlet to do something that I had always loved: writing. Within the first week of joining The Odyssey, it hit me just how much I loved doing this. My love for writing was rekindled and I became happier than I have been in five years. I decided to change my major to communications, figuring that I would be able to either specialize in journalism or something very similar. Because of The Odyssey I am reunited with my first love, and I am no longer going home in tears every day. My grades have even improved and I think a big part of that is the lack of stress I've experienced since the decision to change my major.

All of this to say, I basically let someone else influence what I wanted for my future. When walking away from that dream of mine, I was confused and unhappy. Now that I have returned to that dream of mine, I am so much happier and everything is clear. I am no longer confused about my life. I most likely won't ever go to University of Georgia, and I'm still unsure if I will actually specialize in journalism. One thing I know for certain is, no matter what anyone says, I am following my dream and doing what makes me happy. Never give up on your dream.