After talking to Cara today, I had to take a moment and look back at the bio I first submitted to her almost two years ago, and I must say it definitely gave me a good laugh.
I’m still attending Dartmouth College but I am nowhere near being a double major. I took classes in Government and loved them, but my relationship with Economics didn’t go too smoothly. It took me a long time (the last few months I haven’t been blogging) to accept that something was amiss. I was hard bent on making my family proud and figured that the only way to do so was to make a lot of money. But I hated those courses. I saw the utility of my professor’s lectures but I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life having to apply those ideas; they didn’t excite me.
During this time, I reflected on the times that I had been excited: every visit to my old high school. I remembered how much I enjoyed interacting with students, discussing their dreams, and planning their futures. And, in that moment, I realized that the reason that I had enjoyed my Gov. classes was because I liked the potential avenues it offered me to help others and that’s what I’m going to do for the rest of my life: help others, especially low-income students.
Now, I am proud to declare that I picked a major that is said to make you no money and get you no job, but makes me genuinely happy: English. I’ve also decided that I want to help reform education and am minoring in Education Policy. I’m currently interning at my old high school as a college advisor where Wall Street is far from site and where I’m confidently making my family proud every single day.
So, after being MIA for so long, I’ve come to terms with person I’ve been, am, and want to be. It wasn’t easy or, as Cara put it, “always sunshine and roses.” But it was necessary for me to grow and, for that, I’d do it all over again. As you move forward in your college careers, I hope that you stay honest with yourselves before attempting to do so with anyone else. You’ll find that, in doing, so, you can do more things that you never imagined—things that make you happy.