Student Blog: Changing Plans...Again

It's about that time of the semester where you start to plan for the next semester. Where will you live? What classes will you take? What will your schedule look like? Personally, I think it's all very exciting. I love to plan and start to figure out what my life will look like when I come back to school in the Fall.

That said, planning can also make me want to pull my hair out of my head. With picking out my classes, I'm still somewhat limited by a couple remaining general education requirements I have. However, I'm starting to get some more spaces for electives in my schedule, which brings about the difficult question of what I want to minor in. When I first arrived at college, I felt like I had a solid plan of what I wanted to study and what career path I was interested in. Yet, it seems like every day I'm here, I drift farther and farther away from that plan I came in with. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. Being in college and going to my classes has taught me so much about what I'm interested in (and definitely not interested in) and introduced me to a ton of new subjects and pathways I hadn't previously considered. While that's great, it's led to me endlessly scrolling through different electives and minors and feeling completely and utterly lost.

My main problem is that I have so many interests and passions that it's hard to pick just one to focus on. I have so many subjects and paths I want to pursue and learn more about, so now I just have to figure out which one fits best into where I want my future to go. I ask myself questions like "What minor should I declare?" and "What do I even want to do with my life?" In attempts to stop potential existential crises that the latter question prompts, I've been trying to take a step back and think about what my interests are at this moment. It's really easy to quickly become overwhelmed at the thought of the future, but focusing on what I'm interested in at this particular moment will hopefully help clear things up. Right now I'm leaning towards a Screenwriting minor or something similar that's creative or maybe has something to do with technology, but we'll see.

So, in summary, I'm still figuring everything out, and that's perfectly fine. Although we love some good organization, plans don't (and shouldn't) have to stay in place if you've outgrown them or had a shift in interests. Sometimes it is okay to not have all the answers and instead figure it out along the way. My plans this semester have changed too many times to count, but every time one version of a plan doesn't work out, it brings me that much closer to where I want to end up.