I Am Not Scared

It's ironic how, for the first time in a long time, I'm not scared during what should be a very stressful and scary time in my life. School starts tomorrow, and I've just finished up writing my summer paper and doing some other work for tomorrow and now I feel completely prepared. I'm not scared about the huge amount of work that my college preparation will take, nor am I scared of the difficult classes I'm taking, rather, I look forward to everything I can accomplish this year. There is nothing better than optimism, and this year I have more optimism than I've ever had going into school. I feel that I've reached a point of my life where I can reflect back on and not be disappointed in myself. For the past three years of high school I've been battling trying to discover who I am and that struggle has manifested itself in a lot of disappointing variations of myself. I don't deny that I won't go through more discovery this year, or in the rest of my life, but I think that I have finally chosen a path I can be proud of and I can start to grow in, rather than try and model who I am based on what other people say will make me happy. 

I have decided that I want to go to art school. That decision in itself was one of the most difficult things I ever had to do because of the internal conflict I went through. 

First, I had to accept the idea that I could get into art schools. I've been drawing and painting seriously for less than a year and the idea that I have the ability to get accepted somewhere was hard to grasp for me. Accepting the fact that I'm good enough to get into the schools I want to go to was incredible for my self esteem. 

Second, I had to find something to study. Industrial design was a term that I heard floating around before, but I never thought about it seriously until I started to research what it is industrial designers do. I fell in love with the major after a day of research. As much as I love art, I don't want to spend four years learning how to paint. Finding a major that could fulfill my artistic desires with a more concrete career apart from "artist" after graduation was something I needed if I wanted to pursue art in college 

And thirdly, I had to accept the workload that my decision would entail. The work is enjoyable work, mostly, but that only means that I need to work harder because I'm supposed to like it. I used to want to be like my aunt, spending years in college, getting a doctorate in a very specific category and taking teaching jobs on the side while I travel the world. I abandoned that idea just because I realized that my aunt's career is mostly writing papers, applying for grants and hours of research. I love anything social studies related, but I couldn't accept the workload that a career in that field would entail. I accept the fact that I might have sleepless nights finishing up a project or spend tedious hours trying to draw a live figure model. I understand that it all wont be fun, but I still want to do this. 

Being secure in what I want makes life so much easier. I know what I have to do to get what I want and I'm not scared about failing because right now failure feels impossible.