Fall Semester 2021- Wrap-up

I started this semester with a lot of expectations. I told myself I would continue working towards being a lawyer like I have since I was a junior in high school, and that I would be excellent academically. I had all these preconceived notions about how this semester would go, but, in retrospect, it didn't go at all how I had planned.

For starters, academically, I feel like I failed. I didn't live up to the expectations that I set for myself or even how well I have done academically in the past. I just didn't get where I wanted to be this semester, and dealing with that was hard.

Two, I realized that I don't want to be a lawyer anymore, but that's not even the whole thing, because I realized what I really don't want to do is be in a long-term, committed relationship with a goal or career that I really have no desire to continue pursuing.

If you know me, you know that being a lawyer was my long-time goal. I joined the Army as a paralegal specialist when I was only seventeen to help me boost my resume for when I finally got through college and eventually law school, and I even spent hours researching law schools and internship opportunities. I've taken countless business law courses, law courses, political science courses, and communications courses to prepare myself for that dream, but it's not my dream anymore, and hasn't been for a while.

The choice to finally change my major away from anything that could potentially lead to a lucrative career in law was one that has been a long-time coming, but a difficult one at that. I just kept wondering why I was wasting my time on something that I didn't feel passionate about anymore. I figured I could go along with it, I could muddle through the long hours of courses and studying to reach that goal I once had desperately strived towards... or I could do something different. I could find a new goal, something that resonates with the nineteen year old, almost twenty year old me, rather than settling for what seventeen year old me always dreamed of.

I often hear stories about people in their thirties or forties who are unhappy with their careers and who feel unsatisfied with what they are doing, but choose to stick with it because they've already put so much time into getting where they are. The problem with just sticking to stuff you've put a lot of time into is that eventually it'll run you ragged, and you won't love what you do anymore. The other problem is that time is the one thing you can never get back, and if you're wasting it on things you don't have a passion for, you're essentially throwing that time away.

The point of all of this is to say that, one, you shouldn't waste your time, and, two, you should do what you're passionate about rather than what the expectation for you is, even if that means you're going to take a little longer to get where you want to be.

Another observation I was stricken with this semester, or more realistically, post-semester, was that the educational system wasn't built to help students the way it should.

If you go back to the beginning of this post, you'll remember how I said I feel that I failed academically. While, yes, I do feel I failed in some respects, I also feel the education that I, and thousands of other college students pay thousands of dollars for each semester, has failed me.

I love going to university, and I love being able to take classes on subjects I'm deeply interested in, but what I hate, and have always hated about any educational system in the United States is that getting help when you need it is almost impossible.

I struggle with a visual processing disorder that makes things like mathematics and foreign languages really difficult for me, more so than other students. It makes the way I perceive numbers really difficult to comprehend, and while it's gotten better over the years, I still struggle trying to catch up to my peers. I was always in the advanced math classes in high school, but never really felt like I had a full comprehension of the subject like I should, and, even today, I really struggle with it.

Trying to get help at a university is really difficult when you struggle with something like this, and it's even more difficult when you go to a large university with over 40,000 people at it. Sure, there's online resources, but by the time anyone at the school gets back to you, it's either too far into the semester or they think your claim doesn't hold up or isn't as important as others'.

I think it's also a failure on the educational system's part for teaching students that their value is in their grades. It's like our whole society has been raised on the belief that our grades define who we are as human beings or how good of a person we really are. In reality, our grades don't define us. They don't define how wise, compassionate, hard-working, resilient, trustworthy, honest, or full of potential we are, but rather how well we can check off the boxes on an exam.

I guess what this semester has taught me is that there's a lot more to life than living up to others' expectations and trying to please a system that wasn't built to be pleased. Life is about finding what makes you happy, what you're passionate about, and then doing it despite any shortcomings you may encounter. Life is about our ability to get up and keep going despite the conditions we may be in. Life is about living.