After that class, I was off to Italian. I would have never found the classroom if it wasn't for my student advocate which showed me around the day before. The class is located at the end of a long hallway in the architecture building, past a whole row of cubicles and a construction lab. It is possibly the most unlikely spot for a language class. Upon arriving in the class, I found my friend Sarah who lives on the same floor as me. We sat together in the class. The professor was really nice, or at least he seemed it considering he was speaking all Italian. He spoke once sentence in English. The professor goes, "I have a dog, that dog probably understands more Italian than you do. The aim of this course is to surpass my dog." We all laughed at this, not only because it was funny, but because it was probably true. I'm still unsure of why exactly I took Italian. When signing up at Orientation, the lady helping me figure out my schedule said it'd be a good idea if I want to study abroad, which I do, but to tell you the truth I have no true passion for languages.
As I mentioned before, I'm completely undecided as to my major. Truthfully, it's a very scary subject. Once arriving on campus, a good amount of people seem to know exactly what they want to do. I always think to myself, "Why can't I be that lucky? Why am I so unsure?" My roommate knows exactly what she wants to be. She's double majoring in legal studies and psychology and plans on going to law school to get her degree then become a lawyer. I hear peoples majors and think to myself, "that sounds like something I could do!", but nothing really strikes me as something I'd like to do for the rest of my life. On the contrary, one girl that I met seems to completely detest her major, and it's only the first semester! Whenever she is asked her major, she replies with "ughhh, Political Science." I don't want to be someone who hates what they're doing. I'm hoping that in the next few years I can figure it out. To help speed up the process, I am taking a bunch of core classes, which dabble in every subject. Hopefully, if this does anything, it will weed out the subjects that I do not want to do. I've always been an inconsisent person. I'm one of those people that changes her mind every day about what she likes and doesn't. I think my biggest problem is that I like too much. Everything sounds fine to me, which leads to so much confusion when it comes to choosing a major. I know that I'm not alone in this situation, sometimes, it just seems like I am.
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Steph...I really enjoyed this post, and especially the quote from your Italian teacher. You might write more in the future about the things your professors say that amuse, confuse, amaze, or confound you.
There are two things I found in this post which I'd love to hear more about. YOu write that you're still not sure why you signed up for Italian...you don't currently speak it. So, this is something TOTALLY NEW that you are learning and you say that you, like me, are not good at learning languages (I'm AWFUL at it!!!).
So, why not return to how things are going in learning this new language. Learning a new language is a challenge and learning ANYTHING from scratch, from the beginning, provides all kinds of opportunities to learn about yourself--as a person and as a learner. So, this might be something you return to occasionally with your blog.
But, perhaps more interesting is this issue of what to study/major in. This is such a big issue for students, I know it was for me. I think that, over the course of my first semester in college, I probably thought that I should major in 7 different academic disciplines. It was a confusing time. I think that you have the advantage in being undecided. There is so much pressure on students to pick a major, which they then assume will prepare them for a job (i.e., your friend who wants to be a lawyer). But if you talk to seniors in college, or recent college grads, you'll probably hear a lot of stories about people who majored in something because they thought it would prepare them for a career, but it ended up not doing so...now, post-graduation, they are doing something they didn't expect to be doing at all. I mean, there are some people who just know what they want to do, pick a major, and do end up in that field after graduation...but it's unreasonable, really, to ask an 18 or 19 year old to choose what she wants to do. My advice: explore and tell that voice in your head that keeps tell you that you MUST know what to do with yourself to pipe down. GIve yourself some time to just explore and pay attention to what you are learning about yourself and what you enjoy. Don't pick a major for reasons that have to do with $$$. Find something you enjoy doing, study it, the money, if there is any, will follow (and if there's not, you'll find some other way to be happy).
I'd love to hear more about how this whole "search for a major" plays out. Keep writing about this. Perhaps, make it a theme you return to in the blog throughout the semester.
mm
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