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It’s been awhile since we’ve last needed to blog, and I’ve definitely been feeling the effects of that in my life. Normally, this space provides me an opportunity to reflect and think about important things going with or around me at the moment. I haven’t been getting that recently, so I’m excited to explore some things I’ve been feeling over the past few weeks.

During my time in the PLA, I’ve written plenty a blog about exploring my passions and figuring out my purpose. To be honest, I would have thought that I’d have had that figured out by now – that I would have either a) actually found a passion, or b) at least got the process down to a distilled roadmap for success. Alas, fellow PLAers, I have not.

Recently, I’ve found it hard to find what it is that drives me at my core. Over my first three years at Penn State, the drive to get good grades in classes that I loved while dabbling in extracurricular activities kept me moving along at a supersonic rate. My stresses were about my passions, not about finding it. Ever since I got back from Ecuador and my student teacher experience, I have had a difficult time locating what it is that I’m passionate about.

I have a theory about what happened – I had had a plan for my life before leaving. I was loving my major and was going to try graduate school for Rhetoric and Communication Studies. I had my experience with learning about and teaching ESL and realized that I would also love that. I got back and didn’t have many great outlets for each. I didn’t need to take many more classes in my major, and there weren’t many opportunities for teaching or taking Ed classes since they didn’t help me get my degree in Liberal Arts. I’m still interested in those two fields, but I’ve also been feeling a pull to try to return to the field of public relations, which I explored with an internship two summers ago.

In the end, I have a lot of different ideas about what I want to do, but no way to figure out what exactly the choice will be once we hit graduation in May. They all seem interesting, but at the same time, I haven’t been pursuing many opportunities to figure it out. I don’t have many classes either, so this leaves a ton of time for thinking, which doesn’t typically end positively.

In this experience of not knowing my passion-driven purpose, I find that I have been putting too much pressure on my personal relationships. Instead of being happy and passionate about myself and my own prospects, I find myself trying to latch on to others to get them to make me happy. Truly, that can never end well. Others can only complement us in our efforts. I, and I only can make myself happy on the inside, and I am determined and ready to make that happen.

To be honest, I couldn’t tell you the best way to make this happen. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to go for at least something. I’ve decided to teach a class downtown at Mid-State Literacy Council, and I’m taking Educational Psychology just for the heck of it. My thesis will keep me going with research and work in my major, and I’m also trying for some sort of PR internship on campus.

I do know one thing for certain – I need to stop sitting around twiddling my thumbs and actually go for things that could make me ecstatic about myself and my work. I’m deciding, right here, right now, that it’s time that I do that. So we’ll see where that takes me!