Reflection

So I was not one hundred percent positive if we were supposed to do a blog post but then I figured, I am sure we are, so here I go. I was trying to think what I wanted my last blog post to be about and I put a lot of thought into this post. I think I am going to reflect on this semester and look back.
My college search started with me having no idea where I wanted to go. I knew I wanted a big school, big name, and D1 sports. I wanted a big school so I would have plenty of opportunities to meet a very diverse group of people. I love meeting new and different people. I wanted a big name school because I do not know where I will end up living in my adult life. I want to be able to say where I went to college and no matter where I live, people will know the school. D1 sports were important to me because I think it is vital to your college life to attend big sporting events. To me that is just a main part of college. I also knew I wanted to do engineering. So with those criteria in mind, my search began.
I came up with a long list. Some were reasonable, some were outrageous. My dream has always been to attend University of Southern California, USC. I always wanted to live in California and that school just always seemed so awesome. Obviously that was not a realistic school. No way would my parents ever let me live that far away from home. I also had University of California-Berkeley on my list. Extremely hard school to get in to and obviously my parents would not let me go there but I just wanted to know if I could get in there. I think it would have been really neat to say, “Oh yea, I got in to Berkeley. No big deal.” That would have been fun. But that was just a waste of an application fee. SO that never happened. I ended up applying Early Decision to Syracuse University. I got in and thought I was going but they did not end up giving me as much aid as promised so there was no way I would pay $42,000 for college. I quickly applied to four more schools because all the deadlines were right around when they notified me of the lack of aid. I applied to Virginia Tech, Penn State, Purdue, and Drexel. I was very fortunate to get into all of them. Purdue was out because the weather sucks and it was nine hours away from home. Drexel was a no because I just did not really want to go there. Penn State and Virginia Tech were my last two. I ruled out Penn State because a lot of people from my school go there and it is in Pennsylvania. I wanted to try out a new place, so Virginia Tech it was. Over the summer I was so nervous and anxious. I did not do anything in high school. I did not need to study; I never did homework until the period before it was due. It all just came easy for me and I knew college was nothing like that. Once I got here, I realized I could do, it just took work. I gave engineering my best shot, but I was unbelievably overwhelmed and stressed for the first two months. I could not go out with my friends on the weekends or watch television. I was constantly doing work. I would have break downs, cry a lot. I could not handle that amount of stress and pressure. I talked to over twenty people in the engineering field and multiple students in the engineering major, further down in their education. All of them told me I would not have a life for the next four years and the amount of stress I was experiencing would be like that for the full four years. Also the many people I talked to in the field, I did not like any of their jobs; not one of them. They all sounded extremely boring to me and they were something I would never want to do every day for the rest of my life. The more I researched, the more I realized almost all jobs were like that to me. I started to realize very quickly engineering was not for me, and the four years of stress would not be worth it. I proceeded to explore other majors and the only one that ever possible made sense for me was math. And then I realized the perfect major for me was math education. There were multiple reasons for this. My ultimate life goal is to have a job I love but family is my number one priority. Along with the family I want to be a stay at home mom. With an engineering degree and math degree that is next to impossible. It would be very hard to have a family working forty hours a week five to seven days a week. I also could not take ten years off to raise a family and then come right back to my old job, and not have missed a beat. Being a middle or high school teacher will allow me to accomplish my goals. I will be able to spend a lot of time with them if I cannot be a stay at home because you have weekends, holidays, and summers off. But if I am able to be a stay at home mom, it is very possible to take years off and then come back, missing little to none. Being a teacher is the most perfect job for the life and lifestyle I want. Virginia Tech has helped me to figure who I want to be in my life and what I want to be. I am very thankful for everything I have gained from this University.