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Inexplicable assurance

It took me forever to decide what I wanted to be "when I grow up." That really shouldn't have come as a surprize, I guess. I've always been a late bloomer. In everything.

Despite that, my first thoughts of a job occurred at a young age. When I was in, oh, first grade I want to say, I decided that I was going to become a pop singer and a professional model. Yeah. Be famous and beautiful and all that. It sounds crazy now, but those were my career plans, lol. All the pictures in the family photo album from that time are filled with me in crazy modeling poses -- with the hand on the hip, or the head cocked to one side, and especially there was always something very deliberate done with the way I'd stand.

When I was in third grade I got glasses. There went my plans! Everyone knows models don't were glasses! Lol! At least that's what I thought. And by that point I had heard rumors about how most pop singers were usually involved in... questionable... activities and their private lives weren't what I wanted mine to be. So I gave up on that career path. (The funny thing is that both my parents wore contacts -- it never even crossed my mind that I could get contacts too and perhaps save my modeling career. But as a little girl, I guess you don't think about such things.)

Throughout the rest of my existance, I never really came up with anything else definate to do with my life. I had ideas here and there, but they were brief and fading -- and so varied! Wow, what career option haven't I considered? For the most part, I took a I'll-cross-that-bridge-when-I-get-there stance. Why worry about that now? I'll only change my mind later.

My junior year of high school thoughts of careers crossed my mind more than previously, my senior year I worried about it a little (but I mainly enjoyed myself as a senior -- good times!), and my freshman year of college I positively languished over what to do with myself. Agh! I was spending so much money every semester just to take gen. ed's -- and to what end? Where was I going? What did I want to do for the rest of my life? I considered just about every option under the sun -- at least twice. The problem was that I was fairly good at everything, and I wasn't really bad at anything. (If I do say so myself, lol) There was nothing to rule out. There was nothing that was a definate shoo-in. I cursed the good fortune that made me an all-around jack-of-all-trades. All I knew was that I absolutely despised selling things (thanks to 8th grade cheerleading, ha ha) and I didn't have the stomach that was required to become a nurse or a doctor and deal with ER-type stuff. Blech. So those, at least, were out. But that hardly narrowed down the list of occupations I could find myself in. Night after night, I would lie awake begging God to give me some direction and to put me where He wanted me to be. Wouldn't He give me just one little hint?

A month into my sophomore year, my prayers were finally answered, and suddenly, without question, I knew what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I'm not sure you could call it a eureka moment, and a bolt of lightning or a lightbulb coming on doesn't explain it all the way it was either. Just, one day -- I knew. And that decision holds to this day. I have my doubts now and then, but as soon as I start to ask myself if I still want to or if I can actually do this, those questions are always abruptly silenced by an overwhelming sense of peace and assurance.

You see, I've always loved science. While other teen girls I knew were reading Cosmogirl or Seventeen, I prescribed to a science magazine called Discover. I didn't always quite understand it all, but I got the jist of most of it and found it all wonderfully fascinating. So, to make a long story short: here I am now, years after reading that magazine, majoring in something as crazy as Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Lol. People always look at me funny when I tell them what I'm majoring in. It seems to stop people in their tracks and I'm sure most of you went through something similar to that just now. I'm half embarrassed of the lengthy title myself and usually just shorten it to Biochemistry when asked what I'm going into. Sometimes I'll say Molecular Biology just to mix it up a little. Keeps people on their toes.

I have always, always wanted to help people. (Well, besides my career plans at age 7. But maybe even then I would've donated to charities. *shrug*) No matter what I ended up doing with my life, I have wanted to make a difference and make other people's lives better. And with this major (and, actually, I'll probably have to go on and get a doctorate.... ugh -- but it'll be worth it) I plan on spending the rest of my life studying diseases and (hopefully) finding cures for them. Or, at the very least, finding ways to alleviate the patients' symptoms.

I've got a long ways ahead of me and the path definately isn't all mapped out as of yet. Since it took me so long to pick this major, I'm at least a year behind and definately won't graduate in the allotted four years of most college students. This stuff isn't easy for me. Math was never my best subject in high school and the science classes I'm taking are chock full of numbers and equations. But I didn't want to just coast to my diploma and my degree either. I've coasted all through high school. I wanted to work, for once, for the good grades. And work I do, my Lord! Sometimes I think there's no way I can pass all the classes I have stretching out before me -- its enough to make a person full-out despair! But whenever I start to think: "Well maybe I'd have better luck doing this or that instead.," I'm stopped almost before the notion is completely thought by the realization that this is exactly where I am meant to be. This is what I am to do with the rest of my life. Even if it means late night studying every single night just to keep up with the class, and just barely passing tests, pass them and keep up I will. I do have the ability to do this. I do, I can, and I will.

What brought this up was, as I was sitting in both Organic Chem and Cellular Biology today, I was struck in each class with such a deep sense of contentedness and satisfaction and assurance and... well, of calling. Its one of the greatest and most humbling feelings I have ever had in my entire life.