Question of the Month: Looking Back

 

The Question of the Month is a bloghop that occurs the first Monday of each month and this is the last one that will be hosted by Michael G D'Agostino from A Life Examined. I’ll miss having Michael as our host, but I wish him well in all his future endeavors. Here is the last question he posed for us:

“What’s a decision you’ve made in the past that you know, logically, was the right decision to make, but which you still feel guilty or regretful about?”

            Looking back on the decision I’m writing about today, I also have to go back to my thought process at that time. Now, I can see many other paths I could have chosen, but at that time my choice seemed perfectly logical. It was choosing to major in education at college. First of all, for most of high school, there was this constant pressure to get ready for college. We were bombarded with questions: “Where are you going to go?” “What are you going to major in?” “How are you going to pay for it?” By my junior year, at the ripe old age of 17, I had already made my final decisions. "I’m going to OBU and I’m majoring in Elementary Education." At first, I thought it might be nice to take a year off, but then I had a case of FOMO (fear of missing out) and I didn’t want to be “behind” my peers. I don’t regret my choice of school. I enjoyed OBU’s small class sizes, variety of curriculum within my major, and integration of Christian faith. I chose to teach because people told me I was good with kids, and I liked kids, and the only job I could think of that involved working with kids was teaching. I realized the summer before my final year of college that I did not really want to teach and there were other directions I could have gone. At that point, it was too late to change majors and still finish in a year. My parents and I could not afford to keep me in college longer. Yes, I probably was too quick to give up and give in to my circumstances, but I stuck to my initial plan and even taught kindergarten for a year before calling it quits. After that, I somehow ended up stuck in a pharmacy, and I often look back and wonder what else I could have done. The positive of this path I’m still on is that I have a job with no homework (unless regaining energy counts). So, over time, I have been able to reanalyze my life, I have grown closer to God, and I have renewed my interest, and gained a passion, in writing, all of which can help me pursue a new path in life.