When I get to where I think I'm going.

Remember those days when if someone asked you what you wanted to be when you grow us, you would've answered: batman, a princess, a firefighter, a ballerina, etc, etc.? I was sure I was going to be a ballerina, I bet my parents were pretty sure as well. From the day I could walk, I was dancing around the kitchen in my pretty pink tights, I was running to the house next door in my tutu to see if Alyssa could come out and play. I barely remember those days, but what I can remember makes me happy.

I have no idea when reality set in. I suppose it was somewhere around second or third grade when I realized that there are only a few dozen prima ballerinas in the world and I didn't have good odds. That was a hard reality, I'm sure, but I soon latched on to a new dream. I was going to be a teacher...and I held on to this dream until the middle of high school. From second or third grade all the way until the beginning of junior year of high school, I was planning on being a teacher. I would get so excited to walk in to school on the first day each year to the newly decorated bulletin boards and binders full of lesson plans. I've always loved school and learning (I just hate grades.) so it seemed perfectly natural.

Well, that changed and I wanted to be a counselor (a hardcore Catholic therapist, to use my exact wording from the time). Now I know I'm meant for ministry. I have a lot of helping myself to do before I can help other people, but I have far too much experience with far too many aspects of life to keep them to myself.

When the question became less "what do you want to be when you grow up?" and more "what do you want to do with your life? and who do you want to be when you grow up?" it started to get serious. I'm talking about picking precisely what you need in college to get where you want to go. Your major. Your concentration in your major. Your extracurricular activities. Your summer plans.  One day a few years ago it became this serious business where I better pick correctly or forever hold my peace.

Still, on monday Dr. Miller's advice as we sat in his classroom for the last time was to "Keep dreaming. People will squash your dreams sometimes but if you stop dreaming, you've let them squash you. It might hurt to get rejected but it will hurt more to have regrets."

As I grew up, college was illustrated as a time to search. A time to take a bunch of classes in areas that interest you. A time to talk to professors and figure out what you want to do with your life. And after you figure that out, you get to have experiences that will build you in that direction.

False.

College has turned me into a professional paper writer. I mean, yes, I've gotten to know some of my favorite professors--one even asked me to house-sit for her this summer--but I've realized that it is my job to sit on my bedroom floor and pour my heart and soul into Microsoft Word for hours at a time.

this is the current state of my bedroom floor--

just picture me with my back against the pillow, 

legs covered by the yellow blanket,

and computer on my lap.

I've just passed the half-way point with my 5th paper in two weeks. 

When I finish this one, I will have written over 65 pages. 

How to end sexual violence.

The effects of abuse on self-worth.

The gospels.

C.S. Lewis' view of Satan.

The historicity of the bible.

...and a two weeks before all this started I wrote 10 pages on Natural Family Planning.

This is collegiate paper writing at its finest I'm telling you.

Let me just tell you, I'm looking forward to the day when I get to take all this knowledge I'm writing about and actually do something with it.

"I try to never let school get in the way of my education" --Mark Twain