How did I land here??

I recently read a blog of a friend of mine...he talked about why he's going to school to study what he's studying. It got me thinking, I guess.

I've switched my major plenty of times. More than I should have, honestly.

I started as a secondary education major; then on to music production; then to social work; on to sociology; next to hospitality/event planning. Finally I settled on English Writing with a minor in Spanish. I recently dropped the Spanish, which is fine with me. I love Spanish, but studying it was killing me. And on top of all the major changes, I've been to five, yes FIVE, different schools: CBC, OHCC, RRCC, MSCD and now I'm at UCD. Again, I'm fine with that.

Anyway, all of the majors I've chosen over the years are reasonable. I thought I'd enjoy teaching, but as it turned out, I hated being in Minnesota more than anything and as that's where I was going to do the education major, when I left, I just sort of....stopped going to school for a while.

My heart breaks for the disenfranchised so social work would have made sense as well. I actually came to this conclusion while watching an episode of Law & Order: SVU. The episode made me cry. That's when I kind of knew I should do that. Turns out, there's a ton of red tape that I just don't have the energy for. I saw it when I worked at Volunteers of America. Those people have more patience than I ever could muster up.

So sociology seemed logical next. Study the disenfranchised in order to help them. Meh. I didn't take to that too well.

So the hospitality major seemed to make sense...I love planning weddings! This would have been perfect...if I had endless supplies of time in order to do the work required. The whole program was jacked up for me from the beginning. I cried a lot and, after planning my own wedding, found that I much prefer doing the planning on a purely "pro bono" basis...and I've done quite well at that. I still enjoy planning weddings and events, but I don't think I want to do that for a living, frankly.

After that, I took a semester to really think about what I was passionate about.

And the first thing that popped into my brain was...ENGLISH. I LOVE this language! I have too many books to name that are about grammar, punctuation, syntax, history....all on the English language. And yes, I read them for pleasure. Most of you know this. I love words. I love how they fit together. I love learning new words and working them into daily usage (tee hee). And beyond all of that, I love to read. Why hadn't I thought of this all those years ago?!? I'm good at this...really good at this. I could have wasted so much less time if only I'd have really considered what it was that I'm passionate about. Bother.

So I'm officially (and permanently) in the English Writing program at the University of Colorado-Denver. Granted, I don't enjoy the writing so much as the reading, but the point here is to eventually become an editor and let's be honest....if I can't write well, how am I to judge if someone else writes well? But I have enjoyed writing several of the pieces I've done in the past year or so and that leads me to thinking that writing ABOUT weddings might not be such a bad idea either! Maybe I could write for a magazine or website or something?? I don't know, but it sounds like something I could do.

My mom has also kind of put it into my head to teach English at my high school. I have long been disappointed with the English program there, but I also have pretty fierce feelings about teachers actually being licensed educators and as many of the "teachers" at my high school are not that, I would really need to be sure to get my license before considering teaching. Fortunately, my program allows for students to get their licenses in conjunction with their degree so that might be something to consider as well.

I mean, teachers are kind of always in demand so for the sake of job security, it might not be a sucky idea to get a license anyway.

And Todd thinks it would be super fun to move overseas at some point and I could teach English anywhere we go, which would make getting a job that much easier...

So yeah....I love English. So I study it. With fervor and passion.

And it feels good!