I was at a fork in the road of my decision for what I wanted to major in for school. Since kindergarten, I'd always said I want to be a chef when I grew up; only in middle school did I decide on the type of chef. As a pastry chef or baker since I wanted to do it all, I got to enjoy baking pastries like the cannoli or macarons.
I thought I'd be happy doing all of that until I realized that I didn't create any recipes of my own design. I followed the recipe to a tee unless I was making my chocolate chip cookies. If I wanted to have my own bakery I would need to create a recipe and/or edit a couple of classics to make them mine. Going through trial and error to make a recipe would eventually become costly and I didn't have a lot of money to be doing that.
I applied to my dream school and got accepted. My mother wasn't doing well health-wise, so I decided not to go until she got better. I truly thought she'd get better. A year later she passed away. I moved in with my father and his partner (my step-father). It was a tough adjustment for everyone. I thought I'd never stop grieving. In a way, I haven't. Grief, I've found, likes to hit you out of nowhere, so while I felt okay after two months, I would actually get bursts of emotion tied to my grief at random times.
Now I had a decision to make. I'd put off school while my mother was sick and then after to grieve. I knew one of the requirements for me to attend my dream culinary school were to work in a non-fast food restaurant or get twelve college credits of culinary classes. I enrolled at Hillsborough Community College for one of their culinary certificate programs.
I never attended the school. They charged me for the class I signed up for and forgot to withdraw from. I got to think long and hard about what I wanted to do with my life.
At this point, I'd been dedicating some time each week to writing a young adult romance novel. I thought about how much joy it brought me to write each plot twist or cliffhanger. I thought about how my best friend and sister always said my writing was good. My high school English teacher had unknowingly started me on a path that I didn't know was an option.
I started researching creative writing degrees. A couple schools popped up that had a class, but not the actual degree.
I came across Full Sail University. They had the Creative Writing degree program. I could be able to go on campus, except for two problems: (1) It was two hours from where I worked and lived, and (2) I would not be able to afford to live on campus or their tuition. I didn't really want to take online classes, but if I wanted the open availability and affordability, I had no other choice.
I found Southern New Hampshire University scrolling through my Facebook feed. (Mind you I'd seen plenty of their commercials on TV, but only ever thought it was more of a trade school like Everest University.) Since I'd been doing a lot of research on schools with a creative writing degree, SNHU came up boasting about their online program. I knew they were affordable from their commercials, so I thought this was it.
I checked out the school at like 2 am one late night because I couldn't sleep before my doctor's appointment later that day. I filled out the form that said they would contact me to discuss the program and see if I'm actually interested. By 5 pm that evening I was enrolling for classes.
For the first time in awhile, I was excited to go back to school. I was excited to pursue something I never thought I'd want to pursue. I don't regret changing my mind about my major.
