It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but there is so much to talk about! I’ve been writing all about camp since August, and I feel like I haven’t kept any of you guys in the loop about all that has been happening.
For those of you that are more recent readers, I just want to re-explain what these “Authentic Life Updates” are. When I started this blog two and a half years ago, I wanted this to be a platform where I was fully authentic and transparent, and shared all of the different things happening in my life, both the good and the bad. When somebody has any sort of social media platform, whether it is Instagram, Pinterest, or a blog, they have full control over what goes on there. The problem that can arise with this is that while we aren’t seeing a full picture of a person’s life when we view their profile, we can believe that we are. This gives a false sense of reality, and can often make a person feel lonely and isolated in a problem.
So, I post these authentic updates every once in a while to uphold my original intentions for this blog. It is fun to keep you all updated on the different parts of my life, but it definitely challenges me to show you the parts of my life where I have struggles, doubts, and fears. I hope that these encourage you to see that my life is so much more than just what I post on this platform. I love writing about my faith, life experiences, and Bible studies, but I also don’t want that to paint a picture of me having a “perfect faith”. In fact, I’m actually going through a rough patch with my relationship with God right now, where I struggle to find any motivation in reading my Bible, and my prayer life has been really going through it lately. So, I am hoping that this both encourages you to be authentic, and helps me reflect on my life recently to help me grow.
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This year, I started my first year of college. This has easily been the biggest transition that I have gone through in my life, and it was filled with so many ups and downs. My path to this college was crazy, but I have always known that this place is exactly where God wants me to be. In this first semester, I found my love for working in admissions, took the hardest class I’ve ever had (shoutout to anatomy & physiology), and had to adapt to living in a whole new place.
This transition brought a lot of difficulty, if I’m being honest. It was hard to be away from my family so much, and I wasn’t used to my home being a room that I shared with a girl that I had just met. It was strange to get used to living at the same place where I worked and went to school. One of the hardest parts of the transitions was coming up with a new routine. Whether it was deciding when to go to the cafeteria to get dinner, and who I would go with, hanging out with people that I had just met, or deciding when I would go to bed, I had so many things to figure out. It was overwhelming, and there were days where I would “shut down” and do nothing because of how much was going on, and I had my fair share of bad days. My senior year of high school, college was portrayed as just another type of school, but I had to learn that college was a whole other lifestyle. I had to adjust from living with my family to living with my friends and a bunch of people I’ve never met.
In addition, I had a lot of goals that I really wanted to meet for myself. One thing that I have always struggled with is my history of loneliness, and I knew that the very beginning of the first semester would be the best time to initiate friendships. Thankfully, I was put in a section with other freshmen during our orientation week, and we all grew to like each other. I think that the only reason we got along like we did was the fact that we met on move-in day, so we all understood and bonded over the fact that we were all overwhelmed and pretty terrified at how much life had changed that day. It was such a blessing to have met these people early on, because it allowed me to initiate friendships from the start. Most of my best friends at college were in that section with me, and it was truly just the goodness of God that brought us all together on the very first day on campus.
In addition to all of the changes that came with going to college, I recently switched my major, and now I am officially “undecided”. I came in with a different major, and after being in some classes for that major, I realized that this isn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
Switching from having a plan in my career to officially declaring that I don’t know what I want to do was definitely scary. In high school, you are expected to have a plan, but I feel like I didn’t have a full view of what I was coming into when coming to college. Firstly, looking at college from the perspective of a high school student isn’t the most accurate, because deciding on a major is just like coming up with a fun idea: cool to think about, but not fully formed. Once I actually began researching my major, and looking at the lifestyle I would lead with this job, I discovered that it wouldn’t be very compatible with my future plans of having a family and wanting to spend lots of my time with them.
In addition, I was never told during my senior year that there are no expectations to have a plan for your future. There is so much pressure before graduation to come up with this perfect plan to tell everyone at your grad party, and there was just expectations to know what you are doing. This is not a bad thing on its own, but in my head as a driven student and athlete, I was so used to having a plan. I actually had a negative view of people who had an undecided major, because I just assumed that they came to college to mess around, and they didn’t care what happened with their career. Our society prioritizes having exact plans and never wasting any time, which can be a dangerous thing. When I realized that I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do in my career, it was scary to feel lost and confused, and I felt I had no goals to be working towards.
However, looking back, I am glad that I made the decision to change my major. Now, I have the freedom to explore other major and career options while I spend this next semester completing my general education requirements. I am able to take time to learn more about myself and how I could best serve others in a career. So, to any of you in college questioning your major, but are scared to change this perfect plan that you had made for your life, know that it is okay to not know what you are doing. In addition, if you are in high school and are trying to figure out what your life looks like after graduation, I hope my story encourages you to not stress about what your future looks like. Most people in college end up switching their major at least once, and I know a lot of people that either moved colleges or left because they realized that there was something else that would better suit them. It is great to know what you want to do in your life, but if we don’t give those plans to God and allow Him to mold those plans, we can end up confused and lost. It is okay to go through bumps in your plans, and having to change those plans is okay, even if it feels like you’re moving backwards. The Lord is good, and His plan is good, even if we can’t see it at the moment.
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Thank you guys so much for being a constant source of encouragement and love. This blog is so important to me, and it really has helped me stay on track and learn how to be disciplined. I can’t wait to get back to working on my Bible studies with a deeper Scriptural dive, but I hope you guys have enjoyed my “Stories” series; it meant the world to me! Love you all!
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