Once upon a time ago, two semesters ago, to be exact, I was a nursing major with a writing minor. I was cramming my brain with the different types of microbes and the levels of a pressure ulcer, while reading 60-70 pages per night for my contemporary literature class. Then one day, I got a wake-up call in the form of my trusty academic adviser. This adviser looked me in the eye and told me the truth. The cold hard facts were that while I was soaring in the English/writing department, I was barely above water in the nursing department. Then this amazing and scary thing happened: I thought about dropping nursing and picking up writing as my major.

My head started to swim with the possibilities of not being a nurse. Since I was a little girl, being a pediatric nurse had been my dream, yet my transcripts were saying it was a nightmare. It was one of those moments were deep down in your heart, you know something to be true, yet you fight it because you’re afraid of what the truth could mean? This was that moment in my life. I didn’t take long to think about what I would do; in fact, the next day I changed my major. That meeting was the green light that I had been needing to really do what I was destined to do. I could lie to you and say that it was the easiest decision I had made in my college career, but it was in fact the hardest. It was as if my whole future had come crashing down in front of me.

Nursing, for me, was a closed, ended book. I would graduate, take my boards (and pass), then get a hospital job. Now, being a writing major, my future had so many possibilities that it almost felt unstable. I wasn’t sure anymore what the future would hold for me. My coworkers at the hospital would ask me about school and I would drop the bomb on them that I was no longer studying nursing. They would say, “So, what are you going to do?” As if medicine was the only field that had jobs in the world, but I understood their shock. What was I going to do?

At that point, I didn’t know and I was exhausting all my resources, trying to find a career that would combine my talents, my passion, and stability all wrapped in one. Boy, it was tough. I saw career advisers, I took personality and career tests, all for the sole reason of finding something I loved and would be great at. I felt like I had broken up with nursing and like a regretful girlfriend, I thought about getting back together with it. I would see my old professors and they would tell me how I would be a great nurse and then my coworkers and patients would say how I had a great bedside manner. It was all so overwhelming.

I looked around and realized I would be graduating soon, which for me meant that time was running out. I started looking into graduate programs, hoping that one would fit into what I was searching for. An admissions counselor asked me if I had ever thought about teaching. I hadn’t. Or maybe I had, but suddenly it was all I could think about. I had to stop and really think. I didn’t take too long before I had already imagined myself in front of a classroom full of eager students. I imagined being yelled at by angry parents. I imagined watching a struggling student finally reach the answer. I felt something I hadn’t felt when I was studying nursing: satisfaction. Now, don’t get me wrong, nursing was an extremely rewarding career and I applaud nurses for the work that they do. But it wasn’t for me. My gifts, talents, and most importantly, my passions belong to teaching and education. One thing I noticed was that I wasn’t afraid anymore. I was still leaving the stability of becoming a nurse behind, but now it felt good. I wasn’t regretful or overwhelmed. It felt so right and for the first time since I had made that decision, I felt happy.