Falling into Place

Last November I was a very confused person. While I cannot really say that my first semester of college was unkind to me, it certainly was not easy. I did not know how to fit in to my new adult world and I really was not trying that hard to figure it out. I spent a lot of time focusing on everything that I did not like and blaming other people and things instead of trying to fix anything. I was unhappy. I did not really talk to anyone. I had no idea what I wanted in the future.

It is truly odd how much difference a year can make. I am suddenly watching all of the pieces of my life fall into place and I know what I want. I have a job that I am happy in and I am doing well in school. Next semester I will be applying  to the Social Work program at Weber State. Two years after that I will have finished my Bachelors degree. It will only take a year after that for me to become a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. I will move out at some point between now and then. I will get a job doing something that I love and my life will actually begin to take shape. 

I know for certain that the path I have recently started down is right for me. I find myself getting excited about being out on my own and in a career. I can see where my uncertainty in the past has slowed me down... And yet I am still where I need to be. 

At 5 this morning, I registered for classes for next semester. I am taking four classes. Two online and two at night in order to accommodate my crazy schedule at work (because I am being promoted to manager.) For the first time since 7th grade, I have to take an art class. It is the last of my gen ed requirements. I have purposefully put it off for the past year and a half. I also have to take Human Biology. That class is probably going to really be a struggle for me. Especially since I am taking it online. However, hopefully Kara will be able to help me out. It is a requirement for the Social Work program, so I will definitely need to do well. My other two classes are the first that I will take within the Social Work program. The first is a statistics class that I have absolutely no clue about. The second is a Human Behavior class that I am excited about because one of my favorite professors is teaching it. All in all, next semester really is going to be really great. 

It is all such a change from where I was at a year ago and I just really cannot wait to see what the future has in store for me.

Introduction to Social Work: a Window into a Possible Future

My Introduction to Social Work class is by far one of the most interesting classes I have taken in my short college career. I registered for this class with the idea that it might help me decide if Social Work is a field that I may want to go into (hardly knowing much about it at all from the get-go.) I'm three weeks into the semester and I can already tell you that I absolutely love the class. I love the material and I love the discussions. There is such a wide variety of students of all ages, with all kinds of history, experiences, and backgrounds. It seems as if there is somebody who has personal experience with every issue that has come up so far. Everything from trouble with parents to drug and alcohol abuse to disease to poverty has been covered and expanded upon by someone who has faced it head on in their life. The class has been such an interesting look at people and the struggles they face. It's exactly the kind of thing that has always interested me most.

Still, the big question that I am trying to answer this semester remains. Is this something that I could see as a career? I learned in class, recently, that it is possible to become a therapist with a Master's degree in Social Work. That is something that I have always thought would be incredibly interesting. The problem I've had with it in the past is that I had been led to believe that you had to have a PhD in Psychology to be able to go into that career field and I really just do not want to be in school for that long. A Master's degree, though? I think I can handle the five total years of schooling required to earn an MSW. I'm already a year down. To think that four years from now I could be going out into the field doing something that I have always imagined myself doing is kind of incredible to me. Three years from now I could have a BSW and be working in a place where I could be truly helping people. The idea is such a dream to me.

Does the fact that this inspires me so much mean that it will be a better fit for me than teaching would? I can seriously imagine myself living in an apartment, working in the social work field wherever I can with my BSW while working on my MSW with the ultimate goal of becoming a therapist somewhere down the line. It seems like a life that I would really, really love and something that I could really want. I've always had reservations about going into teaching. Would I really like it? Do I only really think teaching would be a good fit for me because school is really all I've ever known? Can I seriously teach English with the amount of time I've spent avoiding reading in school? My biggest concerns with Social Work so far have been whether or not I can find a job where I'll actually make money and if I'll become as burned out with it as the people that I have read about online are.

I've had this conversation with my mom a lot lately. She keeps saying to my sisters and I that we can't let our futures become focused on how much money we're going to make. I've been all over the place lately with things that I could possibly end up going into as a career. Conversations at work and with my friends always end up on the subject of how we're going to get out of our current jobs and into careers where we'll really start making money. If I go into the medical field or even accounting, I could definitely end up making more money than I ever would if I go into either teaching or social work. In fact, living in Utah means that I will probably always make less as a teacher and a social worker than I would in other areas of the US. Should that matter? If I take my mom's advice than the answer is certainly that it shouldn't matter if either of those things are something that I would truly enjoy doing. Plus, it's not like I would be out on the streets in either career. The average salary for them both is enough and certainly more than I would make if I were to leave school completely (which isn't even a thought, I'm just putting it out there as perspective.)

In an ideal world, someone would come up to me and say "You need to be this. Here's how you do it. Now go." As it is, I'm stuck trying to figure out for myself where I will fit in the world. Sometimes I feel like I hardly know myself at all. It's like looking at a complete stranger an trying to tell them what to do and where to live and how to feel. Maybe what I truly need to do is just stop over thinking everything. I love my Social Work class. I love psychology and meeting new people and helping them in whatever ways that I can. I have always thought that I would be able to truly help people as a therapist. Why should all of these other thoughts come in and jumble everything up?

BSW? BA? MSW? Too Many Possibilities.

Five years ago, I began this blog because it was a requirement for my ninth grade Honors English class. I had tried to blog in the past, but nothing had ever come of it. After that year, though, blogging became a habit for me. It was a chore at first. I never could come up with anything to write about and often wrote about that until I rambled myself into a topic. As time has passed, though, I've found that this blog has been more of a tool to help me regroup and focus my thoughts. My topics tend to be very similar and I tend to only write once or twice a month. Still, I have accumulated five whole years worth of thoughts and growth onto this blog.

I turn here whenever I have something big on my mind. Sometimes I end up writing about that something and sometimes I don't. Usually I don't. Still, my purpose is to regroup. Focus. Writing helps me do that. As I was once taught, "writing is thinking."

So lately I've been stuck on quite the dilemma. What do I want to do with my life? I am a Sophomore at WSU and I have almost completed my generals. Soon I will need to start working on my degree. But what is it that will truly make me happy? There are two major options weighing on my mind. I think I would enjoy both of them with relative success, I believe. Which would I be happier with, though? That is the true question.

Since about the same time that I started writing this blog, I became convinced that teaching English was something that I might want to do with my life. I love grammar and writing. An afternoon spent reading with a warm blanket on the sofa is my favorite way to relax. Would I be a decent teacher, though? Would I be happy trying to teach a subject as difficult as English to students who probably don't care to learn it? Or would I be better off working with a different set of interests? Say psychology?

When I was a junior at Layton High School, I passed my AP Psychology exam with a 5, the best scored I received in three years. I've always been a person intensely interested in people and their relationships with each other. I am an avid people-watcher. All of that combined with the fact that I just learned that it is not necessary to have a PhD in order to go into therapy creates a whole new level of questions for me. Would I like being a therapist? Are there jobs out there for it? Would I prefer it to teaching?

Really, I have a lot of things to consider here. I keep going back and forth between the two and their pros and cons. I still have absolutely no idea what I want to move forward with. Hopefully I'll be able to figure it out soon, though.

Ramblings...

I know I write about change a lot, but lately I've been amazed at how much can change in such a short period of time. Change can be started by the most simple of things: a phone call about a job interview, a Facebook message sent in the early hours of the morning, or even an interjection into a conversation that you weren't actually part of. Those things happen all of the time. I send messages on Facebook almost daily and I'm always talking to people (whether or not I was part of the conversation to begin with.) What has really caused so much to change is the fact that I've wanted this change and I have actively taken part in making myself a happier and more positive person. With that, I've found that I have more friends and more opportunities. 

A year ago I was a new high school graduate with plans and ideas about my future but no real friends. I thought I knew who I was... but it turned out that I had tried to force myself into being something that was not quite natural for me. I can't really say that I have it all figured out now, but I have a better idea. My first year of college taught me a lot about the things that I don't want to be doing for the rest of my life and the things that I do still enjoy but cannot see myself making a career out of. I met all kinds of people but was not quite ready to come out of my shell enough to be friends with most of them. I watched. I listened. I came out of it as a person who could accept that I don't really know where my path is going to take me yet. I know now that there is still so much more about myself that I need to learn. I also know that in order to learn more about myself, I need to be more open to doling things that I wouldn't normally do. 

This was going to be a blog about my sister's graduation party last night as well as the two people who have become my best friends over the last couple of weeks... I don't know what happened to that. Maybe after I get back from camping with Ian and Megan next week. :P In the meantime, I hope anyone who reads this is enjoying life as much as I am these days.

I Wish This Decision Could Be Easy

I recently wrote about my latest great idea to transfer to UVU and move down to Provo in the fall... Well, I did also mention that my ideas hardly ever come to fruition, right? I dream big things all the time. I come to decisions and I try to make plans but something always keeps me in my comfort zone. People have seen that about me and I've tried to get myself out of it. I feel like there are some risks that I really just need to take... However, moving to Provo is not one that is going to happen anytime soon.

It's not because I don't have the resources for it. I've been saving money for a while and I make enough on average to be able to afford living on my own. I could do it. It would probably even be a great experience for me. I'm not even nervous about the idea. I was really, really excited about the idea of being out on my own...

With my latest considerations, though, UVU doesn't really work for me. The biggest problem is that I have been considering going into Social Work... A degree that UVU doesn't offer.

Weber does, though. Therein lies my dilemma. I really have not liked going to Weber this year. I am not enjoying my classes and I haven't really made any friends. The only thing I really managed to do was convince myself that I was not on the correct career path for me. In the past year, instead of moving forward as I always strive to do, I've moved ten paces back.

Will another year at Weber be the same then? Or will I manage to find something, somewhere that fits me? I'm nervous about spending even one more semester in stagnation. I need to find some kind of path so that I can gain momentum. I've considered transferring to the U... But it's so much more expensive. When I really have no idea what I'm going to be doing four years from now, it's probably smart for me to stay put at least until I'm really on track.

I don't like having to make this decision. I hate that I have once again started making all of these plans while people in the background were absolutely convinced that I wouldn't do it. I don't like going back on that decision now partially because I know those people will be thinking that they are right. They aren't, though.

I haven't decided not to move because I have it so much better at home. I know that I have it easier at home. Part of the reason I want to move is that it will force me out of my box and challenge me. That is not why I'm staying put. The truth is that if I want to continue to explore this latest possibility for myself, I need to be at a school that will allow that. I know it's the safer option. I know that people expected me to go back on this like I have on other things in the past.

The thing is, I want to go to UVU. I really wish that they had a bachelor program in Social Work. I think I would love the environment and I think it would be a great experience for me. I am really bummed that I have to go back on this decision that I had made and planned out. I don't want to stay at Weber. If the other option, though, is to spend more of my time doing absolutely nothing with no idea of where I'm going, then I'm going to have to reevaluate.

And that is my latest struggle.

When I Was 19

I wrote the other day about how I always get big ideas when I'm about to leave for work. Another place where my mind really just goes wild is when I'm driving. I'll be headed to school or work or wherever I have to be and all of the sudden a phrase or image will pop into my mind. It's often inspired by the music I'm listening to. Usually it has something to do with whatever big decisions I'm trying to make at the time.

Yesterday, as I was driving home from school, I was thinking about college and UVU and my ever changing ideas about what I want to do with my life. I was thinking about how big of a change I'm going to be going through in about six months. Then I realized... Everything that I'm doing right now, all of my big dilemmas and uncertainties, they're all going to be stories one day. When I'm older and have everything figured out, when I have kids that are facing similar issues, I'll probably tell them about how I was absolutely clueless about what I wanted to do during my freshman year of college.

I'll be able to tell them that it isn't necessary to have everything figured out when you graduate high school. I remember thinking that last year. I thought that I needed to have a specific plan. I also thought that I was ahead of a lot of other people that I knew because I was sure of my path; I knew what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be. That couldn't be farther from the truth these days. I've changed my mind about everything this year. I want to be a different kind of person, I want to go to UVU, I don't want to be an English teacher. These things are all big in their own right and they all leave me with dozens of new things to figure out. I'm not really close to having any of them straightened out in my mind.

That's ok, though. There's nothing wrong with having to take some time to figure things out. I'm still in school and I'm still working. That's the important thing. I don't need to have things figured out completely as long as I'm still moving forward.

This whole thought process was at least partially inspired by Jocelyn's blog that I mentioned a while ago. It was her idea first that these are the things she will be telling her children one day. So when I'm old and have found my place in the world, I can tell my kids that when I was 19 I didn't have any idea what I was going to do with my life. But I figured it out.

So Different, Yet the Same

Parking at Weber is often ridiculous. In fact, if you arrive anywhere between 8:01 and 11:19, you are typically going to spend up to an hour driving through parking lots looking for someone is leaving right that second. I was one of the people who did this several times a week until I realized that it is so much faster just to park at the Dee Events Center and take the shuttle to canvas. That is where I parked today.

After getting off of the shuttle, I noticed that the walkway headed toward the Union Building had white and purple balloons lining it every few feet. I was confused until I saw a sign saying "Wildcat Welcome" with an arrow directing people toward the UB. I was then hit with a realization. Today was Wildcat Welcome. How have we managed to get through an entire month of 2012 with me only barely realizing it? It's crazy really. I remember going to wildcat welcome last year with Carley and our friend Claire. We were all so excited.

Now, a year later, and Claire is in California. Carley and I are going to Weber on very different schedules and having completely different experiences. But back then we were all in the same place; we were all Layton High seniors with big dreams and hardly any clue what we were actually doing. I think that could really describe most of the people that I knew from my senior class at the time.

Where did the last year go? Somewhere between my own Wildcat Welcome and now I managed to graduate high school, work through the drama that is Boondocks during the summer, and survive my first semester of college. I feel like all of this went by in a blur.

And guess what?

I still feel exactly like that Layton High senior with big dreams and no idea what I'm actually going to do with my life.

How is it that some parts of our lives leave us feeling like a completely different person and yet other, more eventful, periods of time end with us feeling like the exact same person we were? It's almost as if I've been standing on stage. The scenery behind me is constantly changing, yet I continue to stand there, looking into the audience with absolutely no idea of what is going on.

The more likely possibility is that I just haven't taken the time to notice all the ways that I've changed in the past year. I'm sure if I spent one day with any of my friends from high school (minus Kara who is the only one I'm still really in contact with) they would be able to tell me any number of things that seem different. Or maybe not. Maybe the changes of the last year were so subtle that they aren't easily noticed right now. Maybe those changes haven't really been completed yet.

mL would certainly be able to point out differences in myself that I haven't noticed. The big difference there is that I haven't seen her in nearly three years. I was going through such huge changes in my life around the time when she moved to Texas that I'm not even sure if we'd be compatible friends anymore. Who knows how much she changed during that time frame.

Anyway, as you can see, my brain wasn't really focused on Human Development of The Short Life of Francis Macombre today. I spent most of my classes thinking about how different things are now and how not different I feel.

Happy February, everyone!

Discovering Potential, Uncovering Dreams

Today, in a (rare) conversation with my dad, I was explaining to him why I was not liking college as much as I had originally expected. I told him briefly that WSU was not meeting the high expectations that I had created for myself through years of dreaming of what my college experience would be like. If we want to be really honest about it, I haven't been meeting those expectations either. Later on in our conversation I was describing to him the loop that I feel I have been stuck in since entering high school. The loop looks something like this:

So I am always cautious of myself when a great new career idea comes to my mind. I try not to let myself get too excited about the possibilities and I try to be fairly rational about the whole thing. What will be best for me? Could I really move across the country from my family? Would I be able to find a job in the field at all? If not, does my major afford me any back up options? Would I still enjoy it 30 years from now? Most of these questions are hard to answer without any experience with them.

My latest idea, though, is something that I believe would leave me with enough options to thoroughly look into it. So what exactly is it that has drawn my attention away from an English teaching major (again)? 

It really started as a result of conversations that I have had with my favorite junior high English teacher and my favorite high school English teacher while I've visited them this year. The thing is, the more they tell me about their difficulties with the administration and the students who really just don't seem to care, the more I think that I wouldn't like being a teacher in the long run. I think I would be passionate about it in the beginning and I probably would love most of the students that I taught. The problem that I have seen, though, is that it does not take much, after a long enough time in the industry, for the job to lose its worth.

That very thought has been in my mind for a few months now. The solution, some other career that I could be passionate about for a much longer amount of time, was what I was lacking. Rediscovering an old dream was what got me set on this new plan. Being a book editor at a publishing company is something that I have daydreamed about since I was 12 years old and my sister, Wendy, and I would talk about how much we loved reading and writing. Who knows if she remembers or not, but we used to talk about how we both wanted to go into publishing. As I grew up, though, I was struck with the reality of just how many of the children who dream about becoming a book editor actually really do.

Really, though, how many of those kids still really want to publish books above all else by the time they're in college? Even more importantly, how many of those college students actually leave their home states in order to join the field that they've been dreaming about? How many of them decide to stay home, close to their families, in a career that they know they can break into more easily?

I'm hoping that my logic here isn't completely wrong... I started researching possibilities today. I've even begun a plan. Most of the high profile publishing companies in New York offer summer internships for college students. I'm going to start putting money away so that by the time I'm a junior I can honestly afford to start applying to spend the summer of 2014 in New York at whatever company accepts me.

That's my new plan. As of today, I'm planning on changing my major to English with a minor in Communications. I'm going to start making a list of books to read and I'm going to spend a lot more of my time reading. I really, really want this. Maybe I'll even find a way to do it while living in Utah. However, for now, I'm not going to let those kinds of things hold me back. I think it's time for me to really look into a new dream. I've been so focused on becoming a teacher for so long that I haven't really thought about anything else that interested me because I thought there was no way I could do it. But I can. And I will.

I've Learned Some Things

I literally just finished taking my last final for my Fall Semester classes. I have been putting off my Astronomy final for a week and today was the last day to take it. I'm actually quite pleased with my score. When compared with most of my grades this semester, a B does not really look fantastic, but I learned much more from that class than the six or seven phases the universe went through during the first few nanoseconds of its existence. That class taught me about myself more than anything else.

Coming into college in August, I did not believe a single word of what my mom and my various teachers in the past had told me about college being completely different. I truly did not think that I would have to work any harder than I did in high school (which was not hard at all.) It took a while for the realization to sink in that I would have to learn study skills and I would be challenged like I had not been in the past.

I still have not quite figured out the best way for me to study. I know that it is going to require more preparation than what I attempted to use this week for my finals. I know that it will mean that I have to force myself to prioritize better. I also know that I cannot work in a messy space, which means I am going to have to clean my bedroom more often.

In the mess that I created by not studying this semester, I may have lost my full-tuition scholarship. It is not something that I am proud of. In fact, I have spent a lot of time hating myself over it in the last couple weeks. I made a decision yesterday, though. If I do lose my scholarship, I am not going to keep beating myself up over it. I made some bad decisions this semester. Those decisions have created consequences that are probably going to affect me for a very long time. Continuing to be angry at myself over the situation will not help me do any better next semester, though. The most important thing is that I learned from the experience.

Anyway, my first semester at WSU has been a little crazy. Now I have three weeks off of school before I start an even heavier course load next semester. Plan to see me blogging a little bit more during that time. I definitely have some ideas floating around in my head that need to be recorded.

College

College.

This single word is something that I have seen as quite unattainable since I was little. Ten year old Madie could never have conceived that she would ever grow up. Fifteen year old Madi had no idea that, while most of high school would pass by in a blur, she would soon be hoping for the painfully slow weeks prior to graduation to go even the slightest bit faster. Eighteen year old Catherine, or Cat as some of my newer friends call me, is completely overwhelmed by whatever it is that she's gotten herself into.

After having wished away so much time and having spent years and years dreaming of what college would be like, it is strange to be able to finally say that I am a student at Weber State University. It is even more strange to walk into a class and be surrounded by people not only my age but any number of years older than me (a guy in my English 2010 class who I get into discussions with every class, announced yesterday that he has been out of school for 20 years.) It is weird not to be surrounded by people I know and it is a relief to not have to play the social game that was life at Layton High.

Yet, for all of its oddities, I have never felt more in my element than I do when I'm walking through the Union Building or discussing the politics of Modern Family in class.

This is by far, the biggest thing that has ever happened to me, and if I could have some time to just figure out how I'm going to handle all of the homework and get a good study schedule put together, then I would be loving it that much more. However, on top of starting college, I've also been dealing with an ever-increasing number of hours at work. This is because, just over a month ago, my boss fired two of our cooks at the same time that our manager and another cook quit.

For the last few weeks, everyone in the kitchen at Boondocks has been commenting on how different it is. After what happened, there were only half of our original group left. Five new people have been hired since then and the five of us who were left behind have been scrambling to get these newbies trained and to a point where we can step back and let them have a shift or two to themselves.

In the middle of this, it seems that everyone is passing around some "sickness" that always infects them mere hours before their shifts. Do you care to take a stab at who is being asked to cover all of these shifts?

It wouldn't be so bad if I could just figure out how to do all of my homework and work all of these shifts at the same time. What I need is one full day with no classes and no work to take a deep breath and get organized (and do my laundry.)

One tip for anyone still in high school: take the time and make a habit out of reading your textbooks. If you can make it any easier/less like a death sentence now, then you will just do that much better once you get to college. While a lot of what teachers say about college being a completely different, more difficult experience is not as huge as it is made out to be, there is a lot more reading required and there is no way to get around it in most cases.

I know this and I am only halfway through my second week.

I'm going to try to start writing on a regular basis as soon as I've got my study schedule figured out. College classes are giving me a LOT to think about and it seems like I have a great topic for this blog on a daily basis. There is just so much going on in my life right now.