A New Beginning

First of all, I'd like to thank Cassi for the perfect blog title. I certainly couldn't have come up with anything better.

So this blog has been lying abandoned for about three years now, and as I've been reminded of its existence - to quote myself from earlier, "I have a blog?!" - I've given this thing a bit of an overhaul and I'm determined to write something on it every once in a while. I'm keeping my three original posts both because Cassi and Veronika begged me to, and as a kind of reminder of where I used to be.

The rest of this post is going to be about university, and how you shouldn't expect the image everyone tries to sell you. Not in a bad way, necessarily; it's just been something I've been thinking about a lot lately, and this is as good an outlet as any.

When I started university, I had a life path in mind: four years of undergrad, med school, residency, maybe a specialisation, then work. I had myself in a pretty firmly pre-med route, but even by the end of first year I started to consider law school. It wasn't until third-year Human Physiology that I realised how much I would hate being a doctor - the course is known for being what you can basically expect in med school, and I derived no real enjoyment from it. At least, not to the degree that I enjoyed Population Ecology.

Had anyone told me after first year that I would be enjoying ecology so much come second-year Intro to Ecology, I might have laughed in their face. And yet despite dreading having to take the course for my major, I ended up loving it! I couldn't get enough, so I took Population Ecology, which I loved even more. In second semester of third year, I've now dropped any illusions of med school and am focusing on ecology, with the hopes of going to law school for environmental law.

But even now, my plans are changing. I've decided to take a fifth year so I can spread out my course load a bit, and take more time for work and extra-curriculars. I've started thinking about doing a master's between my bachelor's and law school; the School of Environmental Science here offers a course-only Master's of Environmental Science. With a year and eight courses, I'd have another degree - one that would definitely give me a leg up if I continue toward my current goal of environmental law.

Basically, the moral of the story is that plans change. People like to give you this idea that university is very one-track, when in reality it's a very flexible system. Sure, some will follow along the track exactly how you're intended to, but it isn't mandatory. You're allowed to take your own pace, and honestly? The most important tool you can bring with you to university is an open mind.