I realized recently that something was wrong with me. I just couldn't figure out what it was. More recently, I realized what was going on within myself and found that I was battling with a truth I knew but always rejected: I was miserable.
If there were a better word to describe it, I would, but I feel like there isn't.
I have been working in a lab at my university and I was offered a job late last year and started in December and everything was great for a while, but the expectations rose from 0 to 500 so fast. I told myself that I could keep up and I did for a while. School started and I tried to juggle doing tasks for this job and my lab assistant job AND my TA position, and it worked for a while. I ignored the fact that I was losing time from my studies and I ignored the fact that my boss for this job was so mean and made me feel like I was incompetent or not good enough for anything. (No one should feel like they're not good enough for the degree they wish to pursue, no matter how many times people agree with it.) I finished the contract for this job halfway through my semester, but my grades had already been affected by my efforts for this job I believed would be worth my time. I have no greater regret than this. My advice to anyone who is going to college that no job is worth your time when you are in school. My grades slipped, I lost precious study time, my friends didn't know I existed, my lunches were alone, and I tried to play catch up the rest of the year. The problem is that I played catch-up while everyone was on the right page and that put me even more behind. I regret all of the time I lost because this job did not make me a better Biomedical Engineer, it made me more sour towards the haughty people in it who believed themselves to be better than others AND it made me a worse student. I did not think anything through before I accepted this job and even though I had been a very good student thus far, I never realized that there was only so much that I could handle.
This job not only made me feel bad about the degree I was pursuing, it made me realize that what I was doing was not the future I wanted. Biology interests me, medicine interests me, but I have no faith in humanity for understanding the beauty that surrounds us and its call for help. I was pursuing my major to become a doctor, this was not the future I wanted. The money would have been great, but money is not going to do anything for me. It could help me afford a home to live in easier or travel everywhere I wanted to go, but was it worth dealing with the terror of being sued or dealing with people I am not going to want to deal with on a daily basis? I love to work with my hands and I love learning how and why something works the way it does. This is the main reason why biology and medicine interested me in the first place, but I found that that is not what I want to spend my whole life doing.
I want to work with mechanics. I want to write the types of things I play around with and what I discovered as a result and relate it to something I can prove through theory. I don't want to have to write "I don't know why this works because it wasn't discovered." (This was a constant in any class I took related to biology. They would tell us "this works because it does" not "this works because of this..."). I LOVE physics. If I could work with kinematics equations all day, I totally would. I love learning how and why something works based on reality, not a type of observation that works because it does. Those kinematics equations never change, they're the same. They're a basis to work off of. They're a theory that has not being proven wrong. I wanted that.
When I realized this and how much I missed math and physics in general, I realized that I was in the wrong major. I filed a petition to change my major and hopefully, by the end of the summer, I will be a mechanical engineering student.
I don't feel so miserable anymore, if anything, I feel enlightened, I feel happy. So many people around me are surprised because of this rapid change. I always told everyone I was happy and that I was doing fine and that what I was doing was what I wanted, but the truth was I wasn't happy, no matter how many times I said it or how many people I told.
I am happy now. I am ready for this change and the things that are to come. I'm ready to face them head on. I'm excited and motivated and I can't wait for the journey ahead of me...
It wouldn't be worth the journey if becoming an engineer was easy.
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