Narrative

I wrote this narrative a long time ago, 5 years or so. After reading through it I am more sure that where I am now is a direct result of my preparations then. It gives me renewed incentive to actively plan my future today.

I consider one day in kindergarten when all of us students were drawing pictures of what we wanted to be when we grew up as the beginning of my long mental struggle to my decision on what to major in. I drew a picture of myself painting a picture and wrote, "a mom and artist". During the next ten years I persisted with the first part, but often it stood alone in between successions of "ballerina, chef, interior manual labor,

accountant, interior designer, architect, landscape architect, translator, photographer, writer, editor, chemist, and physicist". Whenever it stood alone I received questioning, dissatisfied looks and I soon realized that that look was a perfectly logical reaction because the intent and almost entire reason for most people to ask about your future plans is to find ground for meaningful conversation. There isn't much new ground to cover when talking about parenting, at least not as much to cover as there is in a commercial profession. Once I discovered this I tried to always have at least one other thing to say and getting people to know me was easier, and I                                                                                           learned more about others a well.
As I considered various pursuits I gradually shaped my criteria. I will unveil that process by going straight to the specific workings of my mind, and what I learned as I considered professions. At first I only had one criterion: to be like my mom. She graduated from B.Y.U. with a BA in art, so to do the same was my goal until I started taking ballet (my mom almost majored in dance instead so it still fit) and I decided that I would like ballet better.
After various lessons at church on future roles in life and thinking on my own about my future life I realized I needed to know a lot more than I knew already to be a successful mom. This was also when I realized that I might need to support myself at some time and should be prepared to do it, but often as I considered different majors I let this realization disappear if it stood in the way of interest to me so to enable me to make a living never became a true criterion, but was a careful consideration. So my next criterion for my major was born: it must be related to my future role in life (though as I thought about that in connection with various other majors later on I realized almost nothing was ruled out by it). One of the more obvious things fitting with that criterion was cooking and I decided to be a chef. I stuck with that through most of grade school until I realized that almost every chef I had met was fat; the revelation was sudden and frightening, so I did a fast turn around and looked for something more active.
Our home was incomplete when we moved into it and I had the opportunity to help finish parts of it. Thus came my next choice: I would be a skilled worker in home maintenance and remodeling. I don't really remember how this next bit happened but somehow, I received the impression that manual labor was not a subject taught at a university. As stated earlier, one of the criterion for my education choice was to be like my mom and that involved completing my education at B.Y.U. I decided accounting might make a better choice.
Accounting was entirely unknown to me except that it was necessary, difficult to learn, and taught at basically every university. I believed that there was some strange incomprehensible world created by money that only accountants understood, that they had a well guarded secret and if you could figure it out all your monetary problems would be over. I have, perhaps, a better understanding now: that the secret is to spend less than you earn, that the incomprehensible world is created by supply and demand, and that the problems still appear even when you know the secrets. I also received the impression that the rest of it was boring and at this point I added another criterion: it must interest me enough for me to never feel tired.
I moved on to interior design and then photography. I planned to use interior design to make my home a more pleasing place to live and then next with photography planned to take adorable pictures of my children, but I came to the same conclusion for both and yet another criterion: that it would become a lifelong hobby and I should choose something that there was no possibility for me to teach to myself.
Architecture then began to interest me, but I could never convince myself that I could pursue it without knowing a lot about engineering and I didn't have any interest in engineering. I was in this dilemma when we had a landscape architect come and make a landscape plan for our yard. It became the key. I was moderately interested in plants and they were the equivalent of engineering for architecture.
At this point in my life I began to not so much decide against something as just to move on to something I was finding more interesting at the time and still fit in the plan. So I put landscaping on hold when I decided to translate books after a few months of studying Latin which fascinated me. Next I became fascinated with Chemistry when I started studying it; I decided to be a chemist. Then when I finished our Chemistry book and started Physics I decided to be a physicist. These exciting sciences and the increasing possibility they opened up of a scholarship (you see, I was in high school now with a sister going to college) added another criterion to my choice: I must have a way to pay for it. You could argue that this point was apparent before, but this is when it first became especially apparent to me.
My physics plan was gradually narrowed down to Chromatics (the science of the visible spectrum of light) and I was ready to start to buy books to study when I heard about Comparative Literature. I didn't know before then that it was possible to basically major in reading (I have always loved to read) and writing about what you read. So I chose that but wasn't completely satisfied because it seemed a bit selfish and not enormously helpful to anyone, therefore unmarketable. I discovered that for Comparative Literature you need to minor in a language other than your own in order to read the literature you will be comparing. I had been studying Italian (after I stopped my Latin) for two years and decided I might as well major in that too. It pleased me much more because being able to help other people communicate with each other fit well with my idea of a worthwhile major.
Italian then moved me on to more interest in other languages particularly German and French and I now plan to take classes in those languages too, just for my curiosity. This interest in language added to an increasing curiosity about word roots and a sudden realization that I didn't want to be forced to read things I didn't want to read pushed me on to decide to major in Linguistics instead of Comparative Literature. Now you can decide how I did at following my criteria as I recapitulate. The criterion follow.
1. To be like my mom. This mainly solidified into going to the same college and graduating with the same honor.
2. That it better prepare me for my future role as a mother to the point that I could support myself if the need came (I guess in the end this did make the list)
3. That it not compromise my health.
4. That it interest me enough to never make me tired.
5. That I could not learn it on my own just as well or comparably.
6. That I have a way to pay for it.
I do not yet know how well I will follow my criterion. I believe I will know when I wear the graduation regalia, but I'm not there yet and am still suspect to permutations. At present however, I think all are met. As I went through all these changes in my plans I have realized that most of them are now hobbies and all of them have shaped me. Logically thinking through their benefits and drawbacks has also been helpful to show me that whatever I choose will have both. In the end, I consider the most important criterion to be that your choice interest you enough to never make you tired, because with energy and excitement about what you are doing, the other things will mostly fall in place.