Accepted

College. The words that determine the rest of your life. The words that run across your mind once you graduate high school. The words that make you think of parties and four more years of exams. However, this is the chance when you get to choose how you spend your days, what you learn right? At least that's the look I see on many freshman when they come to college, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed jumping at the opportunity to take a reign on their lives or you have those who are excited for the four years of partying that comes ahead, and finally you have those students who come in trailing behind their parent waiting for the tour to be over usually listening to music. These three type of students however, all fall into the same muddling and confusing first year of college, where all three take the same meaningless courses and after the year is over worry about what is next. This is the point where the education system comes in and molds you. In college, the choice is everything. The choice to be an artist or a poet and a law student or a doctor. It's a wide spectrum and while the choice might seem clear at first, the real sense of truth becomes much more confusing. Do you choose a doctor because that's what your father does or do you choose painter because you've been painting since you were a child. The college life pushes you towards becoming a doctor, because this is the more practical choice. This is the choice that will earn you a decent salary and will help you lead a family one day. But, fast forward to thirty years later, you begin to question and blame yourself and your parents for becoming a doctor in the first place. But, it is not the student, it is the system. The system whispers that your dream is unrealistic and encourages you to move toward a safe career path. When I started I knew I had to make a choice, and quite honestly I knew what I wanted to do, become a writer. I wanted to become the next J.K. Rowling, sitting at my desk happily tapping away at the keys. As a child I told my relatives about the books I would write and they found themselves smiling at a child's imagination. Fast forward to when it comes time to pick a major, the system and my parents encouraged me to do something more "practical" but, the truth is I feel as though the creativity is being sucked out of me. As I sit in front of the computer screen writing paper after paper about Plato and Shakespeare. I wondered where all the fun in it went. I wonder what happened to the joy of typing the perfect words in a book? What happened to all the glorious and wonderful imagination that freely use to flow right to my fingertips? Even, now I feel self-conscious wearing a dress that makes me stand out in the crowd.



.....I always thought standing out was a good thing.