This is Part 2 of my career path story (Part 1 is here if you missed it).
I think of this part of the story as "the lost years" - not as in "the years were wasted" but rather "I felt completely lost".
When I didn't get into my chosen program at the big university back home, I settled with going to a local university instead.
While it consistently recieves high ratings for the success of it's graduates and it's small class sizes, I was embarassed to be going there. Many of my friends had gone off to the bigger schools and were living the dream: dorm rooms, parties, and independence, Meanwhile, I was back in my small town, living at home. In the first three months of my first semester, my boyfriend moved away and my parents separated. I was miserable.
To add to my devestation, it turned out that university was difficult. I went from getting As and Bs in highschool to very nearly failing all of my first semester classes. It turned out that while I loved biology, university level calculus and chemistry were really freaking difficult. I realised quickly that I couldn't obtain a biology degree and pursue my dreams of medical research without at least passing the other science courses, and at that stage in my life, I don't think I could have mustered the brainpower to pass those classes had my life depended on it.
Sometime I wonder now whether I could have been more successful in the sciences if my life had been running more smoothly. Did I use parents separation and my loneliness as a crutch, or were the classes truly beyond my capabilities? I think that I was probably smart enough to succeed, but the truth of the matter was, I didn't care enough to dedicate myself. It was a semester-long pity party for one - with Kelly Clarkson as a soundtrack on repeat.
During the next few semesters, I branched out a bit. I took a variety of classes, focusing on criminal justice classes. For a while, it felt like I'd found my niche. I'd always been an avid reader of true crime books, and these classes made a the criminal justice field seem like it was within reach. Once again, I was excelling academically.
I was (and still am) utterly fascinated by the psychological and sociological explanations for criminal behaviour. Psychopoathy in particular was absolutely captivating to me. There is a checklist that is widely used by mental health professionals to identify psychopathy in adults. Because so many of the key traits seen in psychopaths are also the key traits of teenagers (risktaking, lying, recklessness), it isn't possible to diagnose pyschopathy until adulthood.
I can remember presenting in a second year research methods course about how I would design a project to look at recidivism rates in teenagers who scored highly on the psychopathy checklist as an indicator of whether they were likely to be diagnosed as adults. I can remember the professor pulling me aside and asking me if I was truly interested in a career in the field, because based on that project, he considered it well within my reach. I was flattered by his words, but his faith in me actually made me realise that I didn't actually want to pursue a career in criminal justice. As much as I am fascinated by what makes people commit crimes, the thought of dedicating my life to trying to understand why people commit terrible acts would ultimately drag me down emotionally.
When I got the opportunity during a family summer vacation to Mexico in 2007 to stay on as an employee at the resort for an eight month contract, I jumped at the chance for a change of pace. That experience is a very different story, and doesn't really have a place in my career trajectory, except to say that the subsequent year-long break from studying provided a much needed acedemic time-out.
When I returned to the same university in the autumn of 2008, I didn't have any clearer idea of what I wanted to do with my life. Once again, I felt adrift. I knew I was "supposed" to be at university to get a "career", but I truly felt like I was flushing thousands of dollars down the drain for no real purpose. I drifted aimlessly for a few more semesters, taking a wide range of electives in an effort to find my calling: communications, english, linguistics, philosophy, social geography, business, statistics. I was all over the map, and I felt like a failure. Academically, I was doing well in all of these courses, but I wasn't getting any fulfillment, and even more importantly, I wasn't getting any closer to a degree.
Up next: an unexpected and life-changing internship in Kenya.
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