Keeping Afloat

I was already planning to write a blog for some time, so I guess David’s call-to-arms was a wake up call to get off my lazy ass and do it. A lot has changed for me in the last two or so years since I last blogged, and I think I really just need to get all this stuff off my chest. Let’s see if I still remember how to do this..

School

One of the biggest things that happened in the last two or so years of my life was my decision to change majors. Last September, I entered Simon Fraser University as a Computing Science major. The original plan that my parents thought I would take was to go into sciences and become a doctor or something of the sort, but I realized near the end of high school that I didn’t really want to do that. Still, I had to please my parents somehow since they’re the ones who provide for me, so my parents and I compromised, and I agreed to go into Computing Science. It was practical, and I already spent most of my time on the computer anyway, so I concluded I might as well get paid for it. I already quite enjoyed logic puzzles and had some programming experience going into it, so I didn’t really think it would be that bad.

Holy shit was I wrong.

For the first couple of months, I thought I was enjoying myself. I quite liked going to class every day, I felt engaged with the things I was learning, and I was making friends and stuff. Despite this though, I was falling behind, and my motivation to study started to fall off. This was pretty uncharacteristic of me since I usually dig my nails into topics that interest me and I don’t let go. Nevertheless, I continued on from September to mid-November doing the same thing every day, and I eventually began to hate myself, as well as going to school. I hated my professors, I hated the material I was supposed to be learning, I hated the people on the bus who did absolutely nothing wrong other than do minor things that annoyed me. I woke up every morning angry and went to bed sad. Final exams came around, and I barely passed two of my courses, failed one of them, and did very well in Calculus, which is what I teach at Kumon, so that part wasn’t surprising. I decided right then that I needed to reevaluate what I want to do with my life, and whether university was really the right option for me. It was time for a change of pace.

For two weeks after my final exam results came in, I started taking life slowly and thinking about what direction I wanted to take in life. I prayed practically every day for some guidance as I struggled to stay afloat in this huge pool of uncertainty that was my life. It was a really difficult time for me, especially for my faith. If I dropped out of school, my parents would be furious, but if I kept going, I would only waste more time, money, and energy. I moped around for a while, and for whatever reason eventually picked up reading novels again.

I used to read a lot when I was my first year of high school, but then I eventually stopped to focus on courses that my parents thought would be good. That day I was cleaning my room because I couldn’t see the floor anymore, and under my bed I found my copy of Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. I remember how much I loved that book, and sat down to read it again. I was immediately sucked back in, and finished reading it that night. The next day, I dug out some of my old notebooks I used to write stories in and flipped through them. A huge wave of nostalgia rushed over me as I combed through rough, worn, pencil stained pages filled with horrible stories about uninteresting main characters with plain spaghetti on white bread plot. Still, I remembered my joy for writing, and came back on to VuTales to read some of the stuff I had posted up, and a fire ignited in my heart again. I knew what I really wanted to do right then and there. I wanted to write, and I realized that all the time I had been in high school learning about biology and chemistry, I should have spent creating worlds like I used to. I decided that I wanted to change majors to English and see where that took me. There was only one problem though.. how was I going to explain this to my parents?

I tried to find an easier way to tell my parents I wanted to change majors, but there was no helping it. I had to just come out and say it. To soften the blow, I sat down with my mom and told her we had to have a serious talk. I explained to her all the things I wrote above, and that I wouldn’t be happy unless I could change what I wanted to do. I told her I didn’t want to wake up every morning of my life to go to job I hate. Surprisingly enough, she agreed with little to no resistance, and said that all she ever really wanted was for me to be sure that I liked what I was doing.

I promptly signed up for an english course, and two philosophy courses for the following spring semester, and I loved the change of pace that reading things and actually thinking about them instead of just hammering new information into my brain brought. After spring semester, I took two English courses over the summer, and now I’m taking two English courses, a Linguistics course, and a Communications course to kick off my minor in Communications. Overall, I’m glad that I got through that to realize what I really wanted to do, and I’m pretty grateful that I switched out before I was already in too deep. I love what I’m studying now, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

That’s it?

It’s pretty late now, and I have school in the morning, so I’ll just leave it at this for now. I’ll cover all the other stuff tomorrow when I get back from school, so I guess it’s goodbye for now.

I MADE THE DEADLINE DAVID, YOU HAPPY?