the ugly truth about my career, part two.

to read the first installment of this series, click here.

after the whirlwind that was my emotionally & academically draining [but FUN] 

freshman year of college, i came back to louisiana tech [after a very near switch to lsu] 

ready for an academically straightforward year.

and that's exactly how it started.

i'm just going to take general requirements for the first quarter, i told myself.

and after a quick convo with my advisor, i had acquired the 'general studies' 

major declaration, a perfect match for my decisiveness (or lack thereof).

and as the year took off, i sat leisurely back in my sophomore seat, ready to coast.

i took some more of those lovely required courses - making As in some, Cs in others.

and you know, at first, i wasn't really all that worried about what letters showed up on my 'report card.'

this little bit of careless apathy is absolutely something i regret. 

and the sad thing is, it began as just a little blip on the radar in high school,

and grew to be something that [more than slightly] sabotaged a GPA that could have been more impressive.

but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

i intended to coast, & coast i did, through much of the sophomore-year frivolity.

parties, dates, work out sessions... oh yeah, and some school.


and this is exactly what it looked like...

and suddenly, on a normal day, headed to history class, 

it hit me: the breaking point... a big fat ugly grade on a big fat ugly test.

to make matters worse? justin & i were in this class together, & he got an 'A.' 

off i ran into the hallway, pausing to embarrassingly cry in front of my peers

next to a door leading out into the GTM building courtyard. justin, brave soul, followed.

i don't know what it was about this particular test, on this particular day, 

or in this particular class. but suddenly, i was yelling, through the tears, 

what am i doing with my life? why am i even in this class? i've got to figure out my major!

justin did his best to answer these questions, 

to reassure me that my history failure wasn't the end of the world, 

and to remind me that class was about to start. 

i - quickly as i could - mustered up the courage to enter the classroom of a man who had shamed me

in such a way that i never wanted to learn about things that had happened before the right now ever again.

many times i've wondered what my face looked like during that two-hour class.

i have a pretty good guess, & i bet it involved hatred lasers shooting out of my eyeballs,

my anger stare searing into the skin of any who crossed its path.

i told you i was dramatic.

of course, when i look back on this little moment in time, i laugh.

was it funny then? no, but now i laugh.

because it was a culmination of events just like this one that pushed me to really think.

to really make the gears begin turning in my mind about what i wanted to do. 

and by the last third of my sophomore year, i had chosen a path.

a path i decided i wasn't going to deviate from. 

a path that allowed me to rely upon a few of my strengths: english, grammar, writing.

and then - keeping a safe distance from charcoal pencils & classroom sinks - it was official:

i was a journalism major.

and i told myself: this is it.

and, of course, i thought that it was.

to be continued...

photo: vintage college years \ point & shoot