That One Time I Wanted to Go to Law School and Other Changes

I’ve had a lot of plans over the years. Like, too many to count. I’ve got all kinds of life plans, and academic plans, career goals, and milestones that I want to reach but who knows what will actually happen. If I have learned anything from 4+ years of college, is that everything that I thought would happen most likely did not, and all for very good reasons. That’s the funny thing about a change in plans- rarely was it for the worst.

I’ve had various apartments and classes and majors and dreams, and they’ve all morphed into the life I live now and how I want my future to look like. And something I’ve learned over the past six months alone is that that is COMPLETELY okay. Life is allowed to be fluid and ever changing and I’m not done growing and my plans will probably change; whether I anticipate the change or not.

There was a time in my life that I wanted to be a writer. I became a blogger instead (and who know could still become a writer). Then I wanted to be a high school English teacher because I loved that class so much.

I entered college knowing that I did not want to go into education- too much patience that I frankly just don’t have. I became a freshman with a pre-Journalism major, anticipating to enter one of the best journalism schools in the country at Iowa.

Yeah that didn’t happen. I didn’t even apply for it.

After taking one single sport studies class the fall of my freshman year, I was hooked. I never loved reporting, there was nothing creative about it (unless you wanted to be a really bad reporter). I didn’t want to just cover the sports news- I wanted to create it. So I switched to my first double major, journalism and sport studies.

Low and behold one year later when Iowa starts my Recreation and Sports Management program, and I march right into my advisors office to switch to it without it even being declared an official major yet. I had fallen in love. I had found my place. I got to take facility management and design classes, I’m currently in a liability class, I got to study management and promotions and business practices and it was all focused around sport. The best part? Picking Sport and Diversity as my focus area, and being able to take classes in sociology, communication, sports psychology, and ethics.

While trucking along having found my place program I was encouraged by a professor to pursue law school, or at least to consider it. And consider it I did- for a few weeks all I could research was law schools and the LSAT and how to get in, and when it came time to choose a second major (in order to fill up my five years) I went with Ethics and Public Policy as I got to explore even more sociology, ethics, economics, policy analysis, and political science.

Yeah, I’m not looking at law school anymore.

BUT I still love my two choices of degrees- wanting to pursue amateur sports administration fit perfectly with studying sport management and public policy. And I’m pursuing what is just the right fit for me- just enough reading and writing to keep me going, just enough quantitative data to keep me on my toes, and plenty of passionate people in my programs.

I would say this is the plot twist, or the news flash, but lets be real. Is it a surprise to ANYONE that I don’t know what I’m doing after college? I could very well pursue a Masters, or a MBA, or a JD, put will I want to? Will I need to? When do I have to decide…?

The future is weird. It’s like some big dark cloud that I’m hurtling towards, and I keep thinking I’m prepared for it, but I have no idea what’s past that cloud. I do not know where I will end up or what I will pursue besides just what industry I want to pursue and generally where I want to be geographically.

Like how can the girl who changed her major a dozen times be ready for whatever happens next? This has to be the part of the story where I blindly trust the work and experiences I have put in and jump- and hope that something happens to nab me on the way down.

This late night rant has been brought to you by helping my best friend apply for grad school. What have you guys done when approaching a big gray cloud labelled with “Your Life”?