As a freshman in college I didn't know what direction I was going to go. What major? What department? What career? After high school I took a year off to write. I was getting spammed by publishers wanting to buy my book, I spent seasons entering writing contests. When I applied to UNA I wrote down that I was going to go into Professional Writing like my friend. A month before starting UNA my friend made a comment that really changed my life. She said I remind her of Temperance Brennan from the TV show Bones. That opened a whole new world for me.

In high school I wanted to be a medical doctor. I've been in and out of Pre-Med through out my 3 years it was crazy! I marathon House every day. I even managed to get my grandmother's medical books from when she was in college. I didn't have the confidence to allow myself to try. It was very competitive and I never felt like I was good enough. Now that I have grown up a bit and found my self confidence I don't doubt I will finish this later in life.

One thing that most people don't know is Pre-Med is not a major. It is almost like a minor, just a bunch of elective classes required depending on medical school you are wanting to go to. The hardest part for me during this was figuring out an actual major. Typically everyone goes into Biology because most of the Pre-Med requirements are major courses. Others chose Physics because those majors statistically do better in the MCAT than any other major. The actual major doesn't matter and you can pick whatever you want so I spent long and hard trying to decide what I wanted to do if I couldn't go to medical school. I did everything from physics to fine arts but still haven't found the perfect major.

I thought about what my friend said and even tried to go into Anthropology as an Interdisciplinary degree. What you have to do there is find the school with that major and try to copy the courses as much as possible. When I was a freshman University of Tennessee in Knoxville (UTK) was the number 1 school in the country for anthropology. The advisor and I looked into their courses and it was a lot of computer and science courses. My fear of failure got the best of me and I changed majors again. Now I am a History major.

Over the past 3 years anthropology has always stuck in my mind. I started learning osteology online with random articles and slowly taught myself how to read and identify bones. I am now able to look at bones and identify age, remodeling and a couple of diseases. It's weird but I am very proud of that.

Another thing that got to me was art. I have not decided yet if I am going to continue to get a fine arts degree or lower it into a minor yet, but art has always been my life and I don't see myself leaving it any time soon. Before college I would spend all my free time drawing. It saddens me that as a current art student I haven't been able to draw like that as freely as before but I have tried new things since and I am surprisingly interested in sculpture.

The one thing that I have to say that I learned from all that is perspective. If something doesn't go right change perspective and it will become something new. Before college I have gone through a lot things that have really messed me up in the past but since I've been here for 3 years really trying to figure out who I am I have discovered that I can be a little wild and outgoing at times. I'm always doing off the wall stunts because it is fun to do or funny to watch. I learned that I am smart and still struggling to show the world that part of myself and finally that even though I might not have the inner self confidence to do things I know I love I still have the confidence to know my self-worth and I won't let anyone tear me down or berate me just because I chose to be myself or question everything without following blindly. It took me a lifetime to find these qualities and even though I know next year, my senior year, is going to show a lot more challenges I am content that I was lucky enough to find myself.