Uncertainty

When I came to college, I thought I wanted to major in psychology. I definitely find it interesting, and I feel like I have a knack for reading people, so I figured it was something I would be good at. The first semester of my freshman year, I took a general psychology class, and when we came to the neuroscience portion of the class it didn't interest me that much, until I decided to make a flowchart of all of the portions of the nervous system to study for an exam. It wasn't super detailed, but it was enough to make me realize that I wanted to study neuroscience. It's pretty much the same as psychology, but much more brain/nervous system oriented, and I kind of liked that it was a more concrete science than psychology. I still loved psychology though, so I realized that what I really liked was cognitive neuroscience, which is more like, "the hippocampus plays a role in the consolidation of memories," or basically what area of the brain controls a specific aspect of our psyche, rather than other fields of neuroscience, which might be something more like, "the presynaptic neuron releases a chemical called a neurotransmitter that binds to receptors located in the postsynaptic cell, usually embedded in the plasma membrane. The neurotransmitter may initiate an electrical response or a secondary messenger pathway that may either excite or inhibit the postsynaptic neuron." I mean that's interesting and all, but not that interesting. Unfortunately for me, almost everything I've studied so far has been the latter, and I've realized that I'm not cut out for the latter. Maybe if I went on to graduate school I could study exclusively cognitive neuroscience, but I can barely muddle my way through my undergraduate courses. I used to think I was smart, but I've realized I'm not as smart as I thought I was, and that's hard to admit. Plus it doesn't help that in high school, I was smart enough to ace most of my classes without putting forth much effort, so I never learned to work hard when it comes to schoolwork, and that has screwed me over time and time again in college. I just can't handle the neuroscience major like I initially thought I could.


I've always had a passion for history. There's not much more that interests me than learning about the past (except maybe comic books, but that's a story for another blog post, when I'm ready to admit how extremely nerdy I truly am). I don't know why I find it so interesting, but I do. Now some aspects of history are more interesting than others; I mean, I'll take learning about World War II over learning about ancient China any day. And I've always know that I loved history, I just don't know why I didn't realize I really wanted to major in it until now, the summer before my senior year of college. Technically I realized it last fall semester, and I tried to see if I could change my major without having to spend extra time here at BYU, but I wasn't sure if I'd be able to. History is an pretty short major, but it might be a little hard to get done in 3 semesters plus spring and summer terms, if I needed them. I've been kicking myself that I didn't decide sooner that I should have majored in history. Then I could have gone on to graduate school and written books, or tried anyway. Maybe nobody would read them, or they wouldn't even get published, but then at least I would be doing something I truly loved. I don't even know what I want to do with neuroscience anymore. I'm still toying with the idea of switching to history;  I could take independent study classes but I still just don't know if I can finish in time. I don't want to have to spend the extra money to stay longer, and with Andrew commissioning as soon as he graduates that's not really a viable option anyway. And it would kind of suck for all of the neuroscience classes I've taken so far to go to waste,  but then again they're not really going to waste, because I learned from them, and I think what you learn from a class is much more important than the credits you got for it. I'm gonna take a long hard look to see if I can still switch to history but I might not be so lucky. I did decide to minor in history if I have to stick with neuroscience, but I'd still much rather major in it. 


So anyway, it kind of totally sucks that I didn't realize what I wanted to do with my life sooner.  Perhaps you can learn from me though, that you should figure out what you REALLY want to do before it's too late. And trust me, too late is going to creep up on you faster than you think. Stick with what you're really passionate about, not what you're kind of passionate about.  If only I had realized that sooner...oh well. Life's a you-know-what.
*Wrap*