Fall break can’t come soon enough. The school year hasn’t been bad so far, but that doesn’t mean it has become any easier. The tests, essays, and projects all just start to feel like too much after a while. I recall several times last year where enough was enough. To put it simply, I was tired of being tired. So what am I getting at? We all have our ups and downs. There are good days in life, and other days we simply just want to hide under the covers. But there comes a point when even hiding under those sheets can only do so much. The world doesn’t stop on our account. If anything it feels like it speeds up on some days. And yet through it all, we almost seem to lose ourselves in the midst of our busy and chaotic lives. But today I’m here to tell you that even in the darkest of moments that if you just hold on to hope, you too will soon see the light.

Over the summer I was taking a few summer courses in order to be able to successfully continue my quest of becoming a biology major. In the beginning, I was managing it well. Despite the fact that it was only a grand total of three classes, I still found myself staying up late to get all my work done just to go in the next day to learn what I needed to be able to do for the work I was doing the previous night. My lecture course was behind as my lab was moving ahead, and I was becoming all the more frustrated. I had to sit down and take a few moments to think. I started to think about more than just the class, but rather the biology major as a whole. I was already a class behind in my major, and my current performance in the class that I was taking over the summer wasn’t where I wanted it to be. I was also due to take Calculus, which might be great for some, but let’s just say that my area of math “expertise” doesn’t feature calc. Over the summer I just wanted to be done with it all. I was definitely having summer vacation- just without the whole “vacation” part. I stopped going to class because I reached a point to where I simply no longer cared anymore. I started to question my major and career path in general. You best believe the covers were up and over that week. My life just stopped

By the end of the third or fourth day though of not really doing much, I realized that the wallowing was getting old. I knew deep down that doing nothing wasn’t going to solve anything. It was a mere band-aid, one that I was already beginning to rip off. The only story I heard was the one I kept telling myself: that I was always meant to pursue medical and to do anything else besides that would be wrong as it would be straying from the “path.” I forgot the most important thing. My life was never just this one story. It has been many in the making. As a freshman in college, I had considered during the spring semester to take up a minor in psychology. I was drawn into what the lectures had been covering during the introduction course. Now it was summer, and I had to make some choices. They weren’t easy ones, but I went with what my gut decision was telling me. I made the switch to become a psychology major, but I didn’t want to give up biology all together. I still have a tremendous amount of respect anyone who wants to go into the area of the sciences. Therefore, I decided to take up a minor in the biology program alongside my studies in psychology.

To some I am conscientiousness. I’ve pushed myself to limits I didn’t even think were possible at one time. To others I am a person of perseverance. They've seen my strength, my ability to do the hard things, even when I thought I couldn't. That’s why I want to start a new story, one where I don’t stand in the way of my own happiness. And I choose to believe that this story will have a better ending than my last. I have faith, and more importantly a renewed sense of hope that things will work out for the good this time.