College was not what I expected, but that's not to be read with an unhappy connotation.
I started arts marketing my junior year of high school. Poster, programs, press releases, social media campaigns; my job was to make each show have as full of an audience as possible. By the time my senior year hit, I knew theatre marketing like that back of my hand. So, when the time came around to apply for college, it made perfect sense to be a marketing major and to do this exact job on bigger levels.
Plus, I was on my A game in high school; thespian club co-president, choir president, student director of marketing, State Thespian Officer of the PA Thespian State Board. Life was known; life was great. I knew who I was. As I evolved into a college student, I realized that this was not where I used to be. I was back at the start, with the drawing board cleared in front of me.
The program I entered didn’t center around press and campaigns. My four-year plan included multiple levels of Economics, Accounting, and Business General Education, with some marketing classes tacked onto my eventual senior year. I was focused in marketing, but a business major through and through. It wasn’t the exact dream.
It was Thanksgiving when I considered changing my major, again. There was a first time, but it disappeared quickly. It was a very scary thought at the time, I didn’t tell anyone that I was thinking about it. Plus, what on Earth would I change it to?
And that brings me to Jane. It was around the same time as this major change that my best friend and I were binging through one of her all-time favorite shows, the CW’s Jane the Virgin. (I highly recommend this show, if you like everything between comedy and drama, with severely intricate and interesting plotlines.)
Anyway, I was watching Jane, the main character, realize her dream. She has gone through all of college and was about to graduate with her teaching degree. She graduates, but soon gives up the teaching idea to be a writer and to pursue a graduate degree in writing. Now, there’s no way I’m planning my life to be the same as a fictional character on a TV show. It was the fact that Jane’s journey was so relatable and realistic, that she gave me enough courage to take control of my life.
I’ve been a writer since I was in middle school. Now, my fan-fictions and short stories from English class weren’t the best of my works. Yet, the summer before I started high school, I wrote a 70,000-word piece. It needs severe editing, but John Green said it best that “all writing is rewriting.” I took the highest English classes I could, and creative writing junior year. My friend recommended me for Odyssey Online. I’d write stories and memoirs and poems constantly. I loved to write, and it was my outlet.
I specifically remember stumbling onto the undergraduate academics’ page back in January. It still made me nervous; I still didn’t have the guts for it. So, I closed the laptop lid on that idea, and went with it dancing around in the back of my head for the following weeks. It didn’t leave me alone. I revisited the page in late February. I read through the English Writing Studies program for the umpteenth time, and I printed the academic major form.
My point here is that, like Jane, and myself, your dreams can change. So can your fears, goals, major, or career. It’s not a bad thing, and it’s definitely not something you are too old/too young/too inexperienced/too skilled/too anything to do. I still have a lot of the same dreams for my life in later years; a successful career, writing for Playbill, being a mom. But don’t be afraid, wherever you are in life, to chase that dream. It’s your life, and it’s never too late. I’ll leave you with the advice of my favorite TV grandma: “Don’t let your head get in the way of your heart.” Thanks, Alba.
