I'm a terrible decision maker. No matter what I do I have this incredible ability to make every decision difficult. Whether I'm shopping for shoes, school supplies, picking out an outfit, or choosing a restaurant for dinner, I never fail. I have this method of going through all of the possible options, narrowing them down, re-going through my options to make sure I didn't miss anything or change my mind, then narrowing them down to a few choices. From here I either try to make someone else pick for me, put off the decision, or choose them all. I have a lot of the same clothing in two colors for exactly this reason. I do it for the most unimportant decisions and for the most important decisions. Take my major, for example. My interests so far have been business, anthropology, psychology, education, and Spanish. What have my semesters looked like? 1A (freshman, fall) I took Spanish, business, and anthropology classes. 1B I took Spanish, anthropology, and psychology. 2A I took education, Spanish, and psychology. This semester I finally settled on Spanish and secondary education because I just figured if I keep picking Spanish I must like it, and everyone told me I should be a teacher. I didn't declare the major until recently, and I didn't apply to the College of Education until about a month ago. My application will be reviewed on March 15th. So I spent a year and a half in college figuring out my first major.
Now this might come as a surprise to you, because I know I was surprised when I remembered this, but I'm actually in Spain to take classes and learn stuff! Three weeks ago I started my required 2-week intensive grammar class. About a week into the class I was walking to the study center, it was a Thursday, 5:45p.m, and it just hit me. I don't want to teach Spanish at all. Just like that. Decision made.
Well the program I'm in is specifically designed for Spanish education students, and as part of the requirements we do a practicum for 10 weeks teaching English to Spanish students. When we first got to Spain we had to fill out a form of what ages we would like to teach. Now the only students I've worked with are kids ages 5-7, jr. high students, and a little with highschoolers. I had some bad experiences with the young kids at Safety Village, so I assumed Elementary Ed wasn't for me, and I was nervous about teaching English to students who are only a few years younger than me, so I asked for jr. high aged students. I ended up getting put with 6th graders.
Well today I had my first day of my practicum with the 6th graders and guess what. When I got home from the school I sat down and emailed my adviser in the College of Ed and asked her to change my application to the Elementary Education program. Thank God it wasn't officially due until March 15th! It took me two whole minutes to figure out exactly what I want to do with my life, and I couldn't be happier!
Now I'm not completely cured of my inability to make decisions, but I'm definitely learning. I think I might have actually cut my decision-making time in half! For the trivial stuff that is. But one thing I have learned is that there are some decisions that I don't have the ability to make on my own. No matter how many times I went over my possible majors in my head I could never come up with a decision or an answer because I was always basing it off of the same information. Albert Einstein's definition of insanity is: doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. These past few months have taught me that when it comes to the big stuff, all I need is patience. No matter how confused or lost I feel, God will give me an answer. So for now my attitude about life is Que Será Será, whatever will be, will be :)
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