I struggled a lot emotionally in high school. I didn’t identify myself with depression, but a complicated home life was making my classes much harder and I couldn’t do enough to help myself. Luckily, I had a huge support system including friends, family, and the Thompson Valley High painting studio. I poured my entire being into my artwork, and people awed at my creations. I won a few national scholarships for my work, and everybody around me was so excited to see where I would go in my life.

I created twelve pieces around one central idea: Identity. Although I felt confident in my artistic field, I sometimes felt trapped in my own skin, unable to be somebody else with a different life. I had this constant realization that I couldn’t be anybody but Kodi, and that was something I’d have to live with. Despite this nagging feeling I applied for colleges to be an art major at Colorado State University.

I stepped into the dorms for the first time my freshman year of college and for the first time in five years I felt free, to reimagine myself as a person… to restart. I started off strong, but as the months changed my academic success slowly declined.

I was not loving my art classes at CSU. In high school my teachers had filled me with so much passion and positive energy. They gave me fresh, critical feedback, and I never felt dread when my work was critiqued. In college, my professors hardly gave me positive thoughts during critiques. I have a specific memory of a project: we were supposed to do still lives of plants and create a fantasy element to elevate the drawing. I spent over fourteen hours that week working on an incredibly technical and highly realistic tortoise, whose back was overflowing with lush foliage I had drawn by looking at the art studio garden. For the first time in the class I was really loving what I was drawing, and I was excited to show my work. In fact, I was so excited about the drawing a few nights I forgot to eat while working on it. The professor, who had made it very clear to me throughout the class I was not a favorite, completely cut me down and said I had spent too much time on the fantasy and I should have done the entire piece as the leaves. Over fourteen hours of hard work and passion, and I had gotten a ‘C’. I threw the drawing in the trash after he graded me for it and cried in my best friend’s dorm for a while. I wasn’t passionate about the art the professors wanted me to do. I didn’t want to draw stupid still lives of leaves. I wanted to extract part of myself into what I was drawing, and my soul took no interest in doing a large, tedious drawing of Colorado Desert scrub.

Although I had lost a certain amount of passion for fine arts, I continued for a second year and tried to push myself to do better. After all, I didn’t know what I would major in if not art. I felt stuck. Second year classes got better, and I finally was able to take my first photography class, which was the concentration I chose for my art major. I did well in my photography class, and spent hours in the dark room trying to get the best print. In one semester I had gone through three boxes of photo paper.

Every semester each class got a few weeks to showcase their work in the hall by their classrooms, and my photo class would be showcasing our next project there. I found myself working extra hard to create something I’d be proud to put up in the hallway, something that would stand out. After three days straight of staying in the darkroom I finally had the perfect print. I mounted it and turned it in and walked in the next day to see it next to my classmate’s prints on display. I looked through the photos in the case, and all of my classmates had gotten theirs up… except mine. My photo had been the only one not put in the hallway showcase for our class. Outraged, I asked my professor why mine hadn’t been put up. Her excuse was that they ran out of room and had to compromise. I was hurt. I felt like the kid picked last for the kickball team, except that in this scenario I hadn’t even been picked at all. After that I stopped caring as much about the class.

During this time I was taking a Gen-ed Biological Anthropology class. I was always low-key stoked to go. I was taking it with two good friends from my art major, both of which were doing well in art. Both of my friends didn’t love the class, as it was a very challenging lecture and it turned out to be an incredible amount of work and memorization. I loved the amount of study and work I needed to put in. Here was a class where I got graded by my knowledge and work-ethic, and not a teacher’s personal views on what something should look like. I ended up finishing with a high B and a discovery about myself: I was more excited to learn about Darwin’s evolutionary theories than go to my drawing class. Something was different. I realized that if I didn’t love my craft, that even with a bachelor’s degree I wouldn’t be very successful in it.

It had taken me two years, but Finally I gathered up the courage and began to look at new majors I could be successful in. I started out with Biological Anthropology, since it had been the class that had inspired me to take a step in a new direction. I dropped out of CSU to attend Front Range until I could decide what I wanted to do with my life. This simple step shocked my entire family, and I was met with a strange amount of resistance. None of them felt that I could be better at anything than art. After all, art was the only thing I’d ever shown interest in. I didn’t let this sway me, and continued on to take my first biology class and osteology class at Front Range.

I was hooked. It turned out that science was easy for me! I progressed rapidly and my entire demeanor began to lighten, and flourish. I completely restarted my GPA, so that I would have better luck getting into a bachelors program. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do for a career, but I knew that human anatomy and pathology intrigued me. It was my Forensic Osteology professor that spoke to me about being a doctor. “Forensic Pathology,” she said “would be perfect for what you’re interested in.”

There it was, after three years of discovering and reinventing myself time after time: Med-school. I came from visual art, and now I am checking off what I need to be a doctor. I have never been more passionate or excited about where my life is heading, and my family is finally on board and supporting me through it. I wake up ecstatic to go to class, and I have good grades and standing for the first time since grade school. I’d found something hidden deep inside myself that had been struggling for years to get out.

Sometimes, we find ourselves in a bad place in life. We feel helpless, confused, dismayed, and even depressed. This doesn’t mean that you don’t have the ability to be the happiest you’ve felt, and the first step to finding the person you want to be could just be a few doors down. All it took for me was having the courage to quit something I thought I loved. I severed myself from a toxic relationship, and entered into a new one starry eyed and shiny.

It’s never too late to be your own hero in life, and drag yourself over the fence to where the grass is greener. Don’t ever feel that you aren’t good enough, or smart enough to begin something new that you’re interested in. Don’t ever hold on to something that hurts you just because you feel safe in it. Take one step and change your entire life, because I can tell you first-hand how amazing it feels to finally feel like I’m not trapped in my identity, but embracing my identity.

I am an artist. I am a scientist. I am the happiest girl alive.