Life story and goals.
Today I want to do a quick run-down of what thought processes and events throughout my life have resulted in me being here, doing what I'm doing today. This one will be less comical than the last one. Here comes the wall of text:
Going all the way back to elementary school, I've almost always excelled despite having no clear goal. I think maybe I cared/tried more back then, but I never put any thought into where it was going. Do well in school. Ok. Never asked why, just did it. The only major problems came from writing and drawing.
In kindergarten we had an assignment of "draw what you want to be when you grow up." I sat there with a blank piece of paper for a long time, until the teacher came over and asked why I hadn't drawn anything. I said I didn't know what I wanted to be. I was panicked: it was an assignment I couldn't do good on! I didn't know the answer! The teacher said something like, "You can be anything you want! You can be a policeman or an etc. etc." after she walked away, I started drawing a policeman because it was the first thing she said. It was an answer that would get me past this one assignment.
Moving through the years, did well in most subjects, had the highest grades in the class in third grade (I got a certificate for it!) kept doing the work in front of me, with one exception: on the every-other-year-or-so standardized tests, I left about 3/4 of the writing prompts blank. But because my vocabulary and grammar were so good I was still in the 93rd percentile or higher. I learned that I could get away with just not writing if the rest of my work was good!
Middle school, I was in the RISE program, though I dropped the English part of it after the first year, due to poor writing skills. Still, no goals, no big dreams for the future, I was just doing the work in front of me. Was in the MathCounts team, which meant I was apparently the one of the top ten math students in the school. In eighth grade a group of students from Purdue came in to give a presentation for a new program called Project Lead the Way, a set of five pre-engineering high school classes. Actually, according to the 36 pt font at the top of their handouts, they were from Purude University, but that's beside the point. I brought the brochure home, and my dad saw to it that I was signed up for it. Whatever. Sounds like fun. Something to do.
High school, still in most of the honors classes except for English. Still leaving most of the writing prompts blank. The first day of my Chemistry class the teacher said something about how Chemistry takes more work than any class we'd had so far, incredulously adding that the only way you could breeze through it is if you made it through Algebra II without trying. I laughed to myself: I HAD made it through Algebra II without trying. I breezed through Chemistry with a B+.
My Junior year of high school, in my English class we had to write an essay about our goals. I rolled my eyes at it: I didn't need goals. I just show up, do what I normally do, and I do pretty good. I wrote goals like "get straight A's," and "drop my time in swimming;" things that I knew I would just do. At the end of the year we had to do reflections on each of our assignments. I was sick of the class and the teacher, so my goals reflection was to the tune of "Goal-setting is pointless, I was just going to do these things anyway." I got no credit for it, the teacher saying "no credit for satirical goals reflection." Satirical? That was the most serious thing I'd written all year, woman! What, did think I actually put effort into the Beowulf song I sang to the tune of Speed Racer?
Senior year, I had a composition class. Halfway into it the year my teacher called my parents and told them I didn't even have a topic yet, where most of the class was on their first rough draft. Apparently I needed this class to graduate. pfft. I think I ended up bullshitting together something about Go at the last minute.
At some point, I was in my guidance counselor's office going over transcripts and college applications. She had a stack of forms, each with a different person's name on it, and each with a handwritten number jotted in the top right corner. I asked what they were, she said IQ scores. Mine said 130. I looked it up later: I was two standard deviations above the average. I'm "smarter" than 97% of people. That explained why I'd graduated with honors, in the top 7% of my class, without ever giving a shit.
Applying for colleges, I avoided any applications or scholarships that involved writing. If asked where wanted to go to college, I'd shrug and say "Purdue. I guess. My grades and SAT were good enough that I'm guaranteed to get in." What for? "I dunno. I was in that pre-engineering program. I like computers I guess. Computer Engineering?" What do you plan on doing with your degree? "Haven't really thought about it. It's a pretty big field though, right? I'll find something."
My dad did most of the paperwork on apps for other colleges. There was a questionnaire I had to do for one of them, which I avoided for weeks. Furious, he answered the question "what are your life goals?" with "leech off of my parents until they die, then play video games until I die." That hit me for a little while, but eventually I just laughed at it.
I knew college would be different. I knew I couldn't just breeze through it. I wanted to study. But I rarely did. I was still doing assignments the night, or morning, before they were due. I was actually trying LESS than I did in high school. I was forced to drop out of the honors program after the first semester due to grades. Two weeks into my fourth semester in engineering, I freaked out, walked out in the middle of a class and went straight to the guidance office and asked to change my major. They talked me out of it, but I did the same thing two days later, and pushed through. I changed my major to Computer Science.
I don't know what I was thinking. I've only ever written one program that wasn't for a class; I didn't enjoy programming. I spent about a year CS anyway. By the end of it I was walking out of half of my classes early because I couldn't stand them. I was antagonizing half of my classmates because I hadn't yet learned that if you stay in a major long enough, you'll eventually start seeing the same people in all your classes. But they were assholes anyway.
At this point I was freaked out, I had no plan for a major, I was three years deep and I had no plan, no goals, and no vision of where I'll be in five years. I switched to Dietetics. If you ask me why, I'll tell you it's because I liked engineering, I felt like I had an engineer's mindset, but I didn't like any of the engineering disciplines, and Dietetics is like nutritional engineering. But that's backwards rationalization.
The real reason I switched to Dietetics is because my sister read through the list of majors, did some research, and suggested it to me. She said it seemed like a good fit for me. My mom agreed, talking about how good I eat, and how aware I am of nutritional stuff. And while I did do some reading about it, I went along with it for the same reason I drew that policeman in kindergarten: it was just an answer. Now, I really do enjoy studying nutrition and the like, but I feel like that's just a convenient coincidence. And it still hasn't made me study much more. I still don't have any goals. When people ask what I want to do with my degree or, hell, when people ask which branch of the major I'm doing or where I want to do my internship, I tell them I'm still weighing my options. But I haven't even looked into it yet. I still have no fucking idea where I want to be in five years. I really think it has something to do with nutrition, but I don't know what.
And I STILL am not doing my writing assignments. Even when I get an incomplete in a class, three months and a half-dozen concerned emails from professors later I haven't even started. I need to get out of this rut. There's so many things that I think I want to do, so many skills I want to develop that I'm afraid to commit to any of them, I don't want to close any doors, so I end up doing nothing at all. I'm taking my mind, my body, and my infinitely helpful and caring family for granted, and squandering them. I've spent this summer leeching off of my parents and playing video games.
So. That's where I am now. It felt good to get this out, but it's not even a start toward fixing anything. Now I need to quit whining and get to work.
Going all the way back to elementary school, I've almost always excelled despite having no clear goal. I think maybe I cared/tried more back then, but I never put any thought into where it was going. Do well in school. Ok. Never asked why, just did it. The only major problems came from writing and drawing.
In kindergarten we had an assignment of "draw what you want to be when you grow up." I sat there with a blank piece of paper for a long time, until the teacher came over and asked why I hadn't drawn anything. I said I didn't know what I wanted to be. I was panicked: it was an assignment I couldn't do good on! I didn't know the answer! The teacher said something like, "You can be anything you want! You can be a policeman or an etc. etc." after she walked away, I started drawing a policeman because it was the first thing she said. It was an answer that would get me past this one assignment.
Moving through the years, did well in most subjects, had the highest grades in the class in third grade (I got a certificate for it!) kept doing the work in front of me, with one exception: on the every-other-year-or-so standardized tests, I left about 3/4 of the writing prompts blank. But because my vocabulary and grammar were so good I was still in the 93rd percentile or higher. I learned that I could get away with just not writing if the rest of my work was good!
Middle school, I was in the RISE program, though I dropped the English part of it after the first year, due to poor writing skills. Still, no goals, no big dreams for the future, I was just doing the work in front of me. Was in the MathCounts team, which meant I was apparently the one of the top ten math students in the school. In eighth grade a group of students from Purdue came in to give a presentation for a new program called Project Lead the Way, a set of five pre-engineering high school classes. Actually, according to the 36 pt font at the top of their handouts, they were from Purude University, but that's beside the point. I brought the brochure home, and my dad saw to it that I was signed up for it. Whatever. Sounds like fun. Something to do.
High school, still in most of the honors classes except for English. Still leaving most of the writing prompts blank. The first day of my Chemistry class the teacher said something about how Chemistry takes more work than any class we'd had so far, incredulously adding that the only way you could breeze through it is if you made it through Algebra II without trying. I laughed to myself: I HAD made it through Algebra II without trying. I breezed through Chemistry with a B+.
My Junior year of high school, in my English class we had to write an essay about our goals. I rolled my eyes at it: I didn't need goals. I just show up, do what I normally do, and I do pretty good. I wrote goals like "get straight A's," and "drop my time in swimming;" things that I knew I would just do. At the end of the year we had to do reflections on each of our assignments. I was sick of the class and the teacher, so my goals reflection was to the tune of "Goal-setting is pointless, I was just going to do these things anyway." I got no credit for it, the teacher saying "no credit for satirical goals reflection." Satirical? That was the most serious thing I'd written all year, woman! What, did think I actually put effort into the Beowulf song I sang to the tune of Speed Racer?
Senior year, I had a composition class. Halfway into it the year my teacher called my parents and told them I didn't even have a topic yet, where most of the class was on their first rough draft. Apparently I needed this class to graduate. pfft. I think I ended up bullshitting together something about Go at the last minute.
At some point, I was in my guidance counselor's office going over transcripts and college applications. She had a stack of forms, each with a different person's name on it, and each with a handwritten number jotted in the top right corner. I asked what they were, she said IQ scores. Mine said 130. I looked it up later: I was two standard deviations above the average. I'm "smarter" than 97% of people. That explained why I'd graduated with honors, in the top 7% of my class, without ever giving a shit.
Applying for colleges, I avoided any applications or scholarships that involved writing. If asked where wanted to go to college, I'd shrug and say "Purdue. I guess. My grades and SAT were good enough that I'm guaranteed to get in." What for? "I dunno. I was in that pre-engineering program. I like computers I guess. Computer Engineering?" What do you plan on doing with your degree? "Haven't really thought about it. It's a pretty big field though, right? I'll find something."
My dad did most of the paperwork on apps for other colleges. There was a questionnaire I had to do for one of them, which I avoided for weeks. Furious, he answered the question "what are your life goals?" with "leech off of my parents until they die, then play video games until I die." That hit me for a little while, but eventually I just laughed at it.
I knew college would be different. I knew I couldn't just breeze through it. I wanted to study. But I rarely did. I was still doing assignments the night, or morning, before they were due. I was actually trying LESS than I did in high school. I was forced to drop out of the honors program after the first semester due to grades. Two weeks into my fourth semester in engineering, I freaked out, walked out in the middle of a class and went straight to the guidance office and asked to change my major. They talked me out of it, but I did the same thing two days later, and pushed through. I changed my major to Computer Science.
I don't know what I was thinking. I've only ever written one program that wasn't for a class; I didn't enjoy programming. I spent about a year CS anyway. By the end of it I was walking out of half of my classes early because I couldn't stand them. I was antagonizing half of my classmates because I hadn't yet learned that if you stay in a major long enough, you'll eventually start seeing the same people in all your classes. But they were assholes anyway.
At this point I was freaked out, I had no plan for a major, I was three years deep and I had no plan, no goals, and no vision of where I'll be in five years. I switched to Dietetics. If you ask me why, I'll tell you it's because I liked engineering, I felt like I had an engineer's mindset, but I didn't like any of the engineering disciplines, and Dietetics is like nutritional engineering. But that's backwards rationalization.
The real reason I switched to Dietetics is because my sister read through the list of majors, did some research, and suggested it to me. She said it seemed like a good fit for me. My mom agreed, talking about how good I eat, and how aware I am of nutritional stuff. And while I did do some reading about it, I went along with it for the same reason I drew that policeman in kindergarten: it was just an answer. Now, I really do enjoy studying nutrition and the like, but I feel like that's just a convenient coincidence. And it still hasn't made me study much more. I still don't have any goals. When people ask what I want to do with my degree or, hell, when people ask which branch of the major I'm doing or where I want to do my internship, I tell them I'm still weighing my options. But I haven't even looked into it yet. I still have no fucking idea where I want to be in five years. I really think it has something to do with nutrition, but I don't know what.
And I STILL am not doing my writing assignments. Even when I get an incomplete in a class, three months and a half-dozen concerned emails from professors later I haven't even started. I need to get out of this rut. There's so many things that I think I want to do, so many skills I want to develop that I'm afraid to commit to any of them, I don't want to close any doors, so I end up doing nothing at all. I'm taking my mind, my body, and my infinitely helpful and caring family for granted, and squandering them. I've spent this summer leeching off of my parents and playing video games.
So. That's where I am now. It felt good to get this out, but it's not even a start toward fixing anything. Now I need to quit whining and get to work.