Quarter Life Crisis - Econ to English

Like it says in my profile, I'm a 24-year-old girl trying to figure out where life's taking me. I feel lost and confused. And I figure, there's no better way to figure out where I'm going than to retrace my steps and remember where I've been.

When I started college, I felt similarly to how I've been feeling lately. I couldn't figure out where to go or what to major in. I chose GW simply to get out of the NY-NJ area. I started out as an Econ major... because my dad told me if I majored in English or writing... actually there was no if-then statement; I was just disallowed from pursuing writing. I was racking up straight As with my Econ major (if that helps to dispell the notion that I'm stupid, having ended up with a degree in English). I was offered some kind of fellowship or something to go study Econ at Oxford for a semester, which would've been cool. But right before the offer, I started realizing... I hated Econ. It just wasn't my cup of tea.

Around the same time, I took my first creative writing class (and told my dad it was to fulfill the art requirement), which is where I met Dan Gutstein. Dan is still my favorite professor. The first day of his Intro to Creative Writing class, he went around the room and asked what our majors were. When I said Econ, I thought he might actually throw up. He had graduated GW with a degree in Econ and worked in the field for a bit. He asked how I liked it and being that I sounded not so enthused, he offered me some advice: drop it. If you don't love studying it, you're gonna absolutely hate your life when you're working in it. I thought he might have been exaggerating.

By the end of the semester, I was already so depressed and disenchanted with school and my major that I needed to go home early (missing my last final) to reboot. Even my dad was so concerned with my state of mind that he encouraged me to switch my major to English.

That's when I realized, I should always listen to Dan and rarely listen to my dad. Haha. JK... kinda.