I received my bachelor's degree in May 2007 from Kennesaw State. My area of study was psychology. In early June I took a graduation trip to Spain to visit some friends. When asked by my friends whom I was visiting where I was going from there, I was unable to answer clearly. I knew that I finally obtained that piece of paper that everyone kept talking about, but the field of psychology has little application at its 4 year level. I knew that keeping on with school for a doctorate was more time spent learning that I was willing to commit. Also, I see counselors with a terminal masters in psychology (ie. LPCs) as not fully trained and undercutting the professional psychology field. But none of that mattered. I had just graduated college and had my first job landed as a product of an interview that I went on the same day of my graduation.
I remember the night clearly, in Italy (on a side trip from Spain), at the cafe of our trendy hostile. Martin, Izzy, Jarrod, and I were discussing our PASSIONS. Martin and Jarrod shared foreign language as their passion, Izzy had her art (you can always see that glimmer in her eyes), but there was nothing for me... I wanted to feel it. I wanted a deep drive to pursue what interests me most. I wanted a cause and something to chase after. In retrospect, psychology clearly wasn't that. The four of us worked on addressing this. They prompted me to list what my greatest interests were. Well, there was technology and travel. You could definitely throw foreign language in there. Oh, and there was communications and economics too. "What about International Affairs", Jarrod offered? We used a laptop at the table to look it up at a masters level. I looked at Georgia Tech's program, as I knew of its existence from an ex-girlfriend who was in the field. I knew right away that this was my passion. Damn it!, I protested. Why couldn't I have know about this field four years ago. I could have majored in this all along... Oh well.
Pretty much from here, I went home and experienced a dead end job for 2 years. It was in late 09, early 2010, that I created and focused in on my goals. Now here I am, finally chasing my dreams. I feels right...
Here is a link for GIT's undergrad: http://www.inta.gatech.edu/
And their masters: http://www.inta.gatech.edu/academic-programs/graduate/masters/
Hey Sean!
ReplyDeleteI found myself in a similar situation. I was in my last semester as an undergrad, majoring in Sociology, last spring and wanted to do an internship. I knew I was interested in travel as well, so I looked for internships that worked at the international level. I wound up getting an internship at the International Rescue Committee and it was there I found “my passion“. It feels good to have something you are genuinely interested in and to finally be able to apply it. In the past few weeks I have been pretty much laughing at myself. For the past year all I have wanted was to study International Affairs, specifically refugees and displaced peoples, have a job I enjoy, and be out on my own. Well now I have all that and I am barely getting it all done. At first I was also a little irritated that I didn’t think to do International Affairs as an undergrad but I think its gives me a little extra motivation to be looking at it as something new now. Good luck this semester! Hopefully everyone will stick it out! I think its going to be a long hard road until next December, but very much worth it.
-Chelsea