I came to UND determined to study one program and one program only: air traffic control. Because of the school’s great reputation for the aviation program, and the fact that it was realistically the best option in terms of proximity to my hometown, UND was the logical choice. It never occurred to me that I’d be someone that’d be switching majors someday. I’ll chalk that one up to the ‘it could never happen to me’ mentality.

Consequently, I turned down opportunities and offers to go to other schools that I considered before arriving at my so-called final choice, including the University of Minnesota, Minnesota State University – Mankato, and even some Georgia schools simply because they did not have an aviation program. I was jovial with my decision at the time, though, because I was relieved to have finally chosen a major.

Throughout high school I grappled with the tough decision, rooting out more options that weren’t appealing than those that were. I discarded the idea of being a chef (despite taking multiple cooking courses) because I was, and still am to some degree, a finicky eater unwilling to force questionable foods into my palette. I took career decisions courses in an effort to discover more possibilities, but turned up little. Even the school’s aptitude test provided little assistance; the results I received veered more towards cabinet-making and woodwork. During the course of shop class, I had one of the weakest toothpick bridges, the slowest CO2 car, and my parachute rocket exploded – and you believe I should be building other people’s furniture? Um, no.

I was coming up short with each one of my career ideas and was asked in increasing frequency about my future school and major. I started tossing out majors and school names just so I could receive the typical “That sounds great, good luck!” instead of the “You should probably figure that out soon.” If anyone knew the time-crunch for the following autumn, it was me. Eventually, I talked to my sister’s neighbor at the time, and he mentioned how one of his friends worked as an air traffic controller in Maryland, and how much he enjoyed his job. I went home that weekend and researched everything I could find online about it; the pay, the projected job market, retirement age, day-to-day expectations – all of it. I had my answer and I applied solely to UND, attending my first semester in the Fall of 2012.

And for a great while, I was enamored with my major and where it was going to take me and my future. I felt confident that I was doing what I was ‘meant’ to do. I took the required flight course, I did all the proper paperwork, and I got all the right scores in class. As I became more immersed in the field, I began to notice something visibly different about me versus my peers. They were all insanely passionate about aviation in a way that I wasn’t. In fact, everyone in the field that I knew of was. They’ve wanted to fly planes since they were kids, or were relatives of other air traffic controllers and pilots. They’d fill their meal conversations with talks of flight jargon, naming off planes and maneuvers I never bothered to research on the side for ‘fun’, and by and large didn’t care that much about. I learned, however, that my current level of knowledge about aviation wasn’t the issue – it was that level of passion I didn’t possess. I concluded that I hastily picked a major, forcing myself into a school that I hadn’t particularly enjoyed since I started there. This conflict persisted throughout my sophomore and into my junior year, as I pushed myself into psychology as well as courses to prepare me for medical school out of the necessity to choose, and neither of these ventures made me feel satisfied. And yet the whole time I had in the back of my mind that I wasn’t doing what I really enjoyed.

From about 2nd grade onwards, I loved writing. By the time I was in 4th grade and 5th grade, I was writing my own spelling lists from challenging words in the dictionary because my teachers thought the normal ones weren’t difficult enough, and I was attending Bethel’s Young Authors’ Conference in 4th and 6th grade to develop writing skills further, and read primarily nonfiction books for the same reason. Despite how I loved writing, I consciously opted not to pursue it, being told during the search for my major that it was going to be unrewardingly difficult and that English and writing would likely not be able to pay off my school loans. I internalized that and didn’t listen to my gut. While I like having the experience of flying a plane knowing that it sets me apart in a peculiar way within my field, I could have saved a lot of trouble by doing what I love from the start.

At the end of my junior year, I officially switched to English, and I can truly say I love what I do. I’ve since learned that people will always question your motives, especially about your future, and I regret worrying about the pressure of choosing to give others answer at a crucial point when the only person that needed one was myself. It took me nearly four years to exhume from within what it is that I feel I was actually meant to do, and that passion and success in your field stem from more than just monetary motivations and placating personal opinions.