No. I did not go shoe shopping lately. Rather, I google imaged "big decisions" to pull up tonight's postcard image. One of the first images I really liked turned out to be kind of dark- some sort of unidentifiable animal consuming some really cute animal. Although that image is perhaps more fitting to the overwhelming confusion, sadness, and fear that envelopes me every time I try to make a big decision about my life, it's not something I wanted to post next to my big thoughts about my big plans. Shoes, on the other hand, might provide a much needed distraction.
This is not the first time I've had doubts about my college choice or uncertainty about my future path. In the past few weeks though, I've felt an overwhelming sense that what I'm doing no longer matches what I love. "Do what you love and everything will turn out in the end" is one of my mother's rules to live by, and one that I haven't strayed from up until this point. Things came into focus for me during a memorable, if intimidating and unfair, interview for a prestigious and super generous scholarship. This was literally the morning of the day I moved out of my dorm, about 3 weeks ago. I walked into a room of about 14 university professors seated around a U-shaped table. I sat in the hot seat. They grilled me on my activism efforts in Darfur.
I didn't get the scholarship, in my opinion, because it was easy to see that although I've made heartfelt and significant contributions to that cause and student group (STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition), the genocide in Darfur doesn't grip me by my heartstrings and push me to dedicate myself to action. These days, I don't know what does. Although it big time sucks that the prestigious scholarship committee was apparently able to see through my own lack of passionate commitment to a cause that factors, how shall we say, prominently on my resume...well, it's too early to put a positive spin on that shitty rejection, but if I were to go there, I would say that the committee refocused me on a few goals that I really do need to reassess. Are my activities, my studies, my days filled with the things I love to learn and do? Am I making a difference in the issues that really make me want to give my all in every effort?
If the answers to those questions were yes, I probably wouldn't need to blog about them, eh?
Issue No. 1: The Majors
It is said that it doesn't really matter what major you choose undergrad. This leaves me with the puzzling question of why I spend a good part of every discussion I have about college matters with my parents wishing I could erase, rewind, and start from scratch knowing what I know now. When I started school, when I chose a college, I did so for one reason: Jewish Studies. Exactly what I would do with this practically useless liberal arts degree had no bearing on the fact that it was exciting and meaningful and drove most of the decisions I made between 2007 and now. I set myself up on a good path, I've gotten great grades, done research for the founder and long-time director of one of the country's best undergraduate programs in Jewish Studies...I already have at least two professors who would be eager to be my senior honors thesis advisor in the department. But now, for some reason, the awkward feeling I get when I tell people my major isn't the same awkward feeling I used to get when I told people my major. I'm sure most Jewish Studies enthusiasts with any set of social skills would agree that you pretty much feel awkward when you announce your Jewish Studies major to those inside and outside the tribe- it's not a mainstream thing to spend 4 years studying. Now though, it's less the judgements and queries of others that bother me- those never really gave me any doubts in the first place, after all- I was doing what I loved. So it didn't really matter what anyone else thought. Even early last spring semester though, I started to sense that Jewish Studies no longer lit me up the way it used to. It wasn't as exciting or as meaningful, and when I told people, it was with a sense of entrapment. I'm a Jewish Studies major, I guess...not that I have to do anything with it after! I am now quick to add this addendum announcing my own hard-earned (well, not quite yet) degree's uselessness.
If I can't at least enjoy earning this useless degree anymore-- if my actions aren't matching up to my passions-- should I step on the brake, reassess and completely change direction??
OR should I suck it up, realize that it might not matter what my undergraduate major is, and finish up the two years at my current school?
There are a lot of options on the table- never a bad thing- but more than a little overwhelming. Let's start from tomorrow and work forward:
Summer: Work/Not work (ok, not really a choice that falls on me- more is resting here on the mercy of the job market). Because I already made one decision! I'm quitting my stupid GLBT advocacy internship- the supervisors were both disorganized, and I didn't get any sense that I would work on a single meaningful project during my summer, if I spent it with them. The jury is out on whether I will do a single meaningful thing during my summer without them- but it's not like they were gonna pay me!
Fall:
1) Jerusalem or Not Jerusalem: I am prettttty far into going to study abroad through IU at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. That is, my housing form has been sent in. But I have big doubts, including
a) the city of Jerusalem and Israel in general are not really that exciting to me right now.
b) leaving my family, going even farther away than I was at school- SO not exciting to me right now.
c) my own general lack of jumping-up-and-down excitement leads me to doubt whether I should go ahead with some as big as a 7-month study abroad program if I'm so ambivalent about it.
d) I might hate it. I want to avoid the situation where I am sobbing to my mother on the phone and looking at emergency return trip home flights.
e) The program is notorious for its joke-like academics. Whatever.
f) If I'm making a big switch from JS to...something else... then going to Israel might not be the right next move.
If I don't go to Jerusalem, I need to figure out what I'm doing instead. I could go back to IU, live in a cute apartment (somehow living in a cute apartment is always the first aspect of this option that is addressed in the conversations with my parents), be closer to home (but not, we want to see you for Sunday brunch close), and not have to face the unfamiliar, and a big transition. I have, on the other hand, told everyone that I'm leaving. I would have to explain myself, and I would look like a quitter, or a big indecisive weirdo, or something. There's some anxiety around that whole, "But I told everyone I was going away!" Not that really, anyone else in the world would care about that as much as I probably would. Also, the potential of staying at IU probably means I could add another major, or concentration and get that much closer to broadening my long-range opportunities. There would be big ups and downs in another year at IU. There always are there- the weeks where I feel lonely, really down, have to call high school friends across the country 8 times a day just to reassure myself that I haven't fallen into a hole to deep to dig myself out of. Then, there are weeks where I feel so in control, I have huge academic successes on after the other, and I come home to my own space, and miraculously have people to go out with on the weekends, who slowly become friends. I'm getting more comfortable with the pace of friendships at IU- and I have a few friends that I know would be there for me 100%. It's scary to think of backing out of something so big- even if I didn't go to Jerusalem, and did something else next year- I wouldn't have to face all those IU people and explain how my plans changed. I don't know why this freaks me out so much- maybe something to look at more.
I could just slam on the brakes. Big picture things are feeling pretty out of control at this point- my interests are shifting, and right now, I don't think they've really shifted yet. They're just...in flux. Not landed on anything else yet, but definitively strayed off course from JS. About half the time, I'm absolutely sure that the solution to this ridiculousness is to pull back and stop for a while - give my interests time to land where they may. Give my head time to listen to my heart, my heart time to decide, and then give my stressed-out self enough time to meet the appropriate application deadlines given my assumed newfound interests and passions.
I pretty much see this going in one of two directions:
i. take fall semester off, work at home, do lots of yoga, maybe get yoga teaching certification, go abroad through IU spring semester, take classes, finish senior year at IU. Not really sure where this gets me. It doesn't leave time to add a new major ( which would pretty much require 4 semesters at IU...I think), and it doesn't really change anything from how things are now.
ii. take the whole year off, take classes at the U of M, do spring at Adamah (Jewish organic farm in CT), or stay in MN. Then decide what to do. Not really sure how this helps, unless I'm planning on transferring to the University of Minnesota. In which case it just buys time before an admissions deadline. That seems like a lame option, because if I transfer, I probably need 3 years to finish up degree requirements AND a new (and more passion-appropriate) major.
The transfer to the University of Minnesota option looks really appealing sometimes. Especially when you're sitting at home on the couch, sick, and your wonderful parents do things like bring you jamba juice and sudafed. Or when your best friend talks about going several blocks, not states south to see her family. Or when I think about that awful 12 hour drive, and packing up that car again. All of these things make me think that perhaps the requirement to take a biology class with a lab and a physics class with a lab might be worth it. There would be a lot of effort required for this option. I think significantly more than required to go back and finish up at IU. This is the option that scares me the most, maybe, because it's the one I'm afraid I'll regret not pursuing if I don't. I love the idea of being 20 minutes away from home. I love it every time I think about it. Since the day my parents drove away freshman year, I've believed that it's fairly abnormal to deposit 18 (in my case 17) year olds at ivy covered campuses and turn the car around. To be exact, I think it's contrary to every element of human nature and a ridiculous social norm that feeds misery and an unhealthy campus culture. So there, "normal college experience," I think you're laaaaame (but not when I'm at a fun party!)
In short, I'd like to be at the U of M to be close to my family. I can't transfer for fall, but I could for spring. But that's the big draw for UMN as compared to IU- my fam. Other than that, I'm really better off finishing up my degree at IU. It would also feel like a smooth way to shift academic direction, moving to an entirely new institution and all- but given how far along I am in my Jewish Studies and Religious Studies majors- I don't think that anything would really be holding me back from going in new directions at IU.
I don't feel any better for typing all of that out. I woke up this morning and it gave me a stomach ache to think about waking up three months from now thousands and thousands of miles away from this home and this family. It's too bad I have to terrorize them with my emotional decision making flip-flopping angst, all because I love them so much! And I've only made it through the next two years in this post. Just wait still I start obsessing about all the options after that.
My biggest problem, as I see it, is that I need some time to recalibrate my interests and passions, understand them, and then set forth to pursue those paths. If I go back to IU in the fall, will I have enough time to explore myself and then academically respond to my new interests? If I don't have enough time to add a major or minor in line with my shifting passions, will it prevent me from pursuing those things after I finish my undergraduate years?
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