Seasons of Discovery.: Double Take

After three weeks of dismay, writing list upon list to brainstorm what I should pursue, where I could earn that degree, and how many years it would take, I came to the conclusion that I either wanted to teach or possibly go into counseling.

Based on my credits and the strange variety of classes that I'd taken, I didn't think that I would get very far in my conversations with advisors about graduating on time, in 2016. I was planning to have to deal with graduating in 2017, forking out the extra $15k-- which didn't sound very pleasant at all.

On Monday, I had about 5 different meetings with different departmental advisers at UW, along with a meeting with a general undergraduate advisor.

My first meeting with a Psychology adviser resulted in me realizing that I could graduate on time with a psych degree. This blew my mind. Another meeting with an Art advisor about IVA (Interdisciplinary Visual Arts) also brought me to realizing this: the prior degrees I was pursuing just had much more strict of credit allowances.

This was where things got complicated. Speaking with the Undergrad advisor, I discussed my new career goals and how it would now be hard to choose between one or the other.

She started crunching numbers while looking at my transcript and program requirements and told me that it would be full-well possible and a good idea to instead pursue both and double major in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts and Psychology. What?!

I'll have to do a couple more summer quarters of classes, but the fact that I can double major and still graduate on time makes me so happy!

So what's next? I've already declared IVA and will apply for Psych in the Spring! After my undergrad, I will get a Masters in either teaching, counseling, or art therapy. But I have time to figure out what I like about any of those. :)

Work-related: I had my orientation/training session at Specialty's yesterday, and I totally love my new boss and the coworkers that I met! I am so excited for this kind of change. After my vacation I'm going to work my first shift with certification as an official Peet's Coffee barista! Yay!

Honestly, I think that there was a reason that all of these doors got closed on me. And as one of my friends pointed out (who's in a parallel situation): maybe we needed to experience rejection. As in, maybe it was His plan all along that in college I needed to grow by pursuing all the wrong things and get rejected from some, in order to be strong enough when the right door was opened to me. He works in weird ways, and always has a purpose, so I kinda like that explanation.

So, life really is coming together, and I am much happier with my situation.