The Future

Via

I am a person who is extremely content not thinking about what my life will be like in, say, 5 years. 

I hate it actually. It panics me, and stresses me out. I'm sure it does for most people too. 

I've always told everyone that my goal in life is to be an author. Well, except when I was in 2nd grade and tried to claim that I would be a veterinarian. I quickly realized that I don't do well with medical procedures/having to inflict anything upon another being. Not my strong point. >_<

But now for the last however many years it's been, I've been set on wanting to be a writer. I felt there was nothing else that appealed to me. Plus, I was good at it. Finished off 1st semester with a 103% in my language class.

I'm a wee bit of an over-achiever. 

But now has come the time where you're really required to sit down, look at all your course options for school, and try and have a rough plan of what you want to learn, and what you want to do in your life. 

*rocks back and forth in corner* 

I wasn't really concerned about this until I actually sat down and looked over everything. 

The writing electives of course appealed to me...

But there were other things too. 

Short little back-story for a second. 

I once took a pre-test in school, near the beginning of the year, just as a,"What do you know?" sort of thing for the semester's unit. 

One of the questions on the paper concerned the Lord of the Rings books, along with a summary of the series. You were to answer a question on sequence of events, or cause and effect, and I was fairly confident in my answer. 

After all, I've kind of devoted the last 3 or 4 years to this stuff. 

I got the answer wrong.

And I kind of lost it. 

I knew my answer was right. The other ones didn't make sense, didn't correlate with the overall effect of the war for the ring.

So I quickly sent an email to my teacher, asking if I could fight for my answer. It was just a pre-test; didn't count as a grade or anything, but I still wanted to prove that my answer was the correct one.

My Language teacher is a really fun man, and he was all for me arguing my point. 

I typed up a short paper, went over it with my friend and then sent it to him. 

He replied back a little later saying,"Well fought, well written, point awarded. Are you thinking of becoming a lawyer?" 

I'll admit, I laughed at the email. I was happy I'd won my point, but being a lawyer? 

Ha. No sir, I plan to be an author.

....

Or do I?

I hate admitting this, but I argue a lot. My parents can verify this. Trying to get me to go to bed early, at a specific, set time is like trying to tell someone they can't use WiFi for a week. 

Ain't gonna happen. 

I will always, always, fight, barter, and wheedle my way to getting just five extra minutes before turning off electronics for the night and heading to bed. 

It's fun for me, honestly. I quite like debating, and being right. 

So when I was looking at courses and saw Introduction to Law as one of them, I stopped, and kind of stared at my screen. 

"You plan on being a lawyer?" 

*tugs on hair and hits head on table*

The problem was not the prospect of having to eventually go through college and law school; a total of 7 years of learning, if I decided to take that path. 

No, the problem was, I'd been planning so long on writing. Being an author. Working for a company where I could use words. Anything, that I could use my writing skills for. 

I kept the notion of the law course in the back of my mind and continued scrolling through the lists of things to take. 

And then I stopped again. 

I'm a really big mystery/crime nerd. I adore the Nancy Drew PC games. The whole concept of trying to figure things out, find motives, and how people are connected has always been such a fun thing for me. A show called Border Wars is one of my recent addictions. The trouble people go through to try to sneak things into the U.S. is mind-boggling to me. The people who figure it out, and connect the rings of people working to do this, fascinate me. 

So of course, I stopped at the sight of a Criminal Investigation course. There's also an Introduction to Criminal Justice course as well. I kind of just refer to both of them as going hand in hand as I'd likely take both at the same time. 

Criminal Investigation

Criminal Justice

At this point I was kind of getting flustered. What the heck was I going to do? 

What did I want to do? 

It's hard, when you've been stuck in a mind-set for so long, thinking that there is nothing out there that will suit you, only to then come upon classes that interest you, that lead to completely different professions than what you had planned. 

Throughout going to dinner and eating at a restaurant yesterday night, I talked with my parents about the three paths I was looking at. I think my mom was slightly surprised at the criminal side of things. She told me that I'd have to become a police officer and then move on to detective if that's what I was thinking. I told her I knew that, and she seemed shocked. Not in a bad way, but still surprised. I'd never before really voiced interest in those kinds of things.

I'm lucky enough to have parents who will be supportive of me no matter what I choose. As long as I'm happy, and able to support myself, they're okay with what I do. I know sometimes parents try to force their kids into professions. Makes me even more grateful that mine would be supportive of me going for what I like. 

Talking with my mom, I managed to lay out somewhat of a plan, although we still need to put together my courses for sure. 

I'd like to focus on each path in separate years. Take the courses and see what appeals to me most. My mom was careful to remind me that nothing is set in stone. She had a friend's daughter who she believes graduated with a degree in language or architecture, who now works at an animal shelter. 

It's hard, thinking about the future. Especially when you know you can't really control it. Certainly, you can make choices that affect it, but none of us know for certain what's going to happen. God has a plan laid out for all of us, and try as hard as I will to figure it out and know it, I won't really ever know it. 

The future is still daunting and scary to me. It always will be, I think. I worry a lot, but I'm trying to relax. I've never been tremendously good at going with the flow of things, but my goal is to get better at it. 

For now, I'm just going to get my feet wet and see what I like. 

Who knows, I could end up as a criminal investigator who goes on to write about her experiences, when she gets old and grey, and moves to England. 

Wouldn't that be something? :D