this. is. major.

Excuse the pun, but I really have made a huge (*ahem* major) breakthrough in regards to my chosen major.

You see, most college students enter college with some idea of what they want to do with their lives. I was one of those students - I was going to be an high school English teacher. It only made sense. I love reading and writing and school, and I've always done well in my English classes.

Enter college, when I realized that English classes are a big ol' load of hooey. (See how eloquent I am? I just have "English Teacher" written all over me!)

I still loved to read, but once we got into the discussions, my frustration began to grow. I just could never see why certain aspects of stories represented the author's struggle with coping with loss or whatever random baloney my professors and peers were so convinced of.

I started to wonder if it ever crossed anyone's mind that the author might just have been writing whatever thoughts entered their brain without giving a second though to what literary device they were using. Or that the author may not really have a hidden meaning behind everything. Maybe they liked the color black and weren't drawing a connection to the veil of death that was draped over society. (Please note that all examples I am using are completely fictional. I retained nothing from my classes and couldn't tell you what we actually talked about. Something similar, I'm sure.)

Slowly but surely, I ruled English teacher out. Then I ruled English major out. If I wasn't going to be a teacher, what would I do? Work at Barnes and Noble while blogging? No thank you.

This year (my sophomore year) has been a major-quest. I took random classes that weren't required of me, much to the chagrin of my more career-focused friends. I had a mini-meltdown when I realized I might want a career in journalism and that if that were the case, I should have gone to the University of Oregon.

I talked to anyone who would listen about my problem. Friends. Family. The women I met at The Pioneer Woman's book signing. And then the meltdown continued because everyone had fantastic advice - the worst part was that almost everyone told me to make the right decision for me. This was lovely, but not really helpful because if I knew the right decision, I would have made it, wouldn't I?

Whew. Sorry for that little outburst. Pent up stress isn't good for me.

Somewhere in the midst of the meltdown, I had to put money down on the house I'd be living in next year. Talk about stress. After a moment of panic, I ended up putting the money down and decided to stick it out at Oregon State for one more term before making a decision.

And now, a month later, I have made a decision.

I have decided to major in Liberal Studies. At Oregon State, this means you create your own major, picking and choosing programs from the Liberal Arts department to compile your own unique course of study based on a theme you select.

My theme will be "Written and Spoken Communication" and I plan on taking Writing and Communications classes. I don't know exactly what I want to get into, but I know that this theme is something that I love and will be able to do something with in the future.

I'm also planning on minoring in Spanish. But I already had that figured out.

My next move is to design my major, then write a paper in which I will explain what courses I want to take and why, then get approved, then I will officially have a major and be able to get on with the rest of my life.

What a relief, right?

I told you - this is major.

♥ abigail