If I had the choice, honest to Bible, I would be a professional student. When I say this, people always ask me what I've been smoking because people are supposed to hate school, right? WRONG. You are wrong. I love me some school.
When I first told my friends I was looking at graduate schools, they all had the same reaction: Ew. I truly am so excited about the prospect of getting more education. I love it! I like knowing things. It makes me feel accomplished and special. I constantly find myself asking questions about things and what better way to get the answers than school? (or I suppose wikipedia if you really are short on time and can't afford to take a class just to find out how to survive the zombie apocalypse - side note: this is a real class at my friend's university and I almost transferred just for this class).
My issue is that I want to know everything about anything that remotely interests me. If I had infinite time and infinite monetary resources, I would probably have degrees in four languages (Spanish, French, Portuguese and Russian), acting, film making, forensic anthropology, creative writing, dance, and sociology. All of these things are the best things in my mind and I want to know about them. But I don't want to pay for them, so I suppose I will just be another ignorant american who doesn't have forty degrees.
Europe is always besting me.
I am currently in the process of changing my major for the fourth time. I am a first semester sophomore. I'm told this is normal, but I feel so strange and awkward every time I change my major. When I entered college, I decided to be a Liberal Studies Major. This was partially my way of selecting undeclared and partially me being interested in the program. However after a semester of people asking me, "What is Liberal Studies?" and me being unable to come up with an answer, I decided I should probably change majors. It was at this point that I decided to get a double major in Spanish and French. I went through the process and got approval from those two department heads, however I still needed to get a signature from my current department head who also happened to be my Honors Humanities professor. I kept chickening out of asking him to free me from his major that cannot be defined and finally decided to just stay a Liberal Studies major. I tore up my change of major sheet and continued with my spring semester. However, again within one month I decided that being to chicken to get my sheet signed was also a really pathetic reason to have a major in something, so I went through the process again to do a Spanish and French double major. This time I did it. I entered my second year of college as a Spanish and French double major (here comes another however). However, now I am working on dropping my French major for an Acting/ Theatre major (I don't think I'm going to do a BFA so it'll be called a theatre major). I also have decided that I'm about 90% sure I'm going to grad school because a) life outside of school scares me and b) I would then be the first person in my family to go to grad school. Win.
One might look at my changes of majors and think, why the variety? Fine arts and foreign language? Well, here's where I am right now: I have wanted to be an actress since I was a small child. I first did a play at age six (I peed my pants on stage... but that's another story) and consistently did community theatre and high school theatre for the rest of my life. When I was first entering college, I had all intentions to do a theatre/ acting major, however I got a lot of mixed feedback from it and decided to do Liberal Studies. For the past year and a half, I have always gone back to the idea of doing this major, and finally I am saying, "why not?" This is what I love and I want to do it. I also keep thinking about myself in an office setting or doing a typical career, and it just doesn't go well together. I am too snarky, too spacey and too hands on to be in a typical career.
Plus, I like to play pretend and dress up.
I really do think that if there was a way to be a professional student, I would do it. I would totally love to get paid for going to classes and learning stuff. I could be like one of those know it all things!
Is that a real thing or am I making it up?
2 comments:
I think you can be whatever you want to be. If it's a professional student, so be it. Your uncle Jay certainly would have rivaled you in that arena. He too had a uncommon desire to learn. The real trick to achieve your goal is to look into any and all government grants that you can find to apply for. The government loves to give that kind of money away, especially if you qualify. There must be people or organizations that can help you fund your dreams. I have some software that might be of some use.
That would be fantastic! I get wonderful grants from FAFSA that covers my tuition, it just doesn't cover anything else.
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