I’ve been grappling with a lot lately. Burnout’s still hitting me quite strongly and I can’t seem to find my passion in life. Ahhh, a prototypical college student’s life; fantastic, utterly fantastic.
Primarily, I’ve been wrestling with the issue of changing my major. This week, I had already decided to change from electrical engineering (which is quite theoretical and programming-heavy) to mechanical engineering (which are what both my parents and stepparents are). However– and here’s the nuanced caveat: I don’t think I’m going to be staying in engineering for that much longer. Let me dig deep and tell you why.
A brief history of my academic career. I was very “slow” (at least in grasping new mathematical concepts) in elementary school (incredibly slow in fact). But I loved to write; that is, I loved to express myself creatively. At the age of ten, I wrote a short story that is long gone to the annals of time. Of course, it wasn’t a stellar story (not by any means).
But it let me recognize that I have a voice and stories to tell.
This is respectively why I presume you’re reading this blog. I continued writing short stories until I got into middle school, where the course load from my math and science classes overwhelmed me. I’ve always dealt with stress terribly; and during sixth grade, that was no exception. This is, I believe, where my anxiety stemmed from: not understanding something mathematical and not wanting to. I really disliked math, simply because I just didn’t “get” it. Well that was quickly changed. In came my dad. Quite a magnetic force to be reckoned with, in the sense that my dad is a brilliant engineer and an even more brilliant business man. He loves the applications of math and engineering, and thus he forced me learn the material. That sounds quite harsh and rather crude, but it’s true. Every weekend, he would sit me down at the dining table and yell at me for an hour to two hours until I was able to do the plethora of problems he assigned in front of me.
Now, rather than demotivate me even more, this constant stressor to understand math propelled me in my math (and science) courses there on out. Throughout the rest of middle school and throughout the entirety of high school, I loved math (especially physics). Or rather, I thought I did.
In high school, I was never forced into any class that I didn’t want to take. That being said, however, there was always an emphatic emphasis in my family to do well in the STEM-focused classes. But I always found myself absolutely excelling in english and humanities classes.
Simply put, it just came “natural” to me.
Furthermore, during high school, I found out that I absolutely loved public speaking. Growing up as an only child, I usually did most of my day-to-day “stuff” alone. However, as I grew older, I loved when the spotlight was on me. This is exactly what I found in public speaking. Every project I ever had to present and every speech that I had to do, I excelled at.
Despite dealing with the throes of depression quite viciously during senior year, it was my favorite year classes-wise (if that’s even an adjective). I loved my english class, primarily because I loved interacting with my peers during class discussions and speaking during presentations.
And, quite frankly, I was good at it.
Truly. The adrenaline and excitement I got from public speaking made me happy to an extent of which I haven’t experienced in college albeit once. Now, as you can tell from my picture, I’m just a white 20-year-old. However, during the Fall of sophomore year, I found myself at a Pan-Asian networking club on campus. Simply put, I loved it. I loved getting to know the people and where they were from; that is, I loved connecting with them. Unfortunately, due to time constraints put on myself from my rather onerous course load, I only went to one meeting and never went back. Sad.
Lastly, there’s one thing I want to touch upon before I send off for the day, and that is being the captain of the track team in high school. I became captain my junior year and in senior year, I grew into my own in regards to leadership. I was one of the worst runners on the team (I was a sprinter), but I loved (there’s that key word again) cheering people on (teammates and the supposed “opposition”). At the end of the year, I was chosen to give a speech about what these last few years on the track team had met to me. Throughout my rather terse speech, I poured my utter heart and soul out into my words; rather fittingly, I ended with “and we should give ourselves a big fucking round of applause” (that didn’t bode well with the parents in the crowd). Quite frankly, it was just me exuding my inner self, sailor-mouthed and all.
Thus, in summation, I (rather fortunately) know what gets me excited and engineering may not be that which sparks my inner intensity. As always, my question for you is: what is your passion in life and how will you take steps to get “there” (whatever “there” means to you)?
Up the Down Turn 