Decisions make me

Morgan Rooney
MSMU Class of 2020

(9/2018) Every decision we make through our lives contributes to our future. We learn, experience, and grow. Some decisions seem easy, and some we put off for ages because we can’t make up our mind about what’s best for us.

The difficult part about making decisions, is that we are often afraid of how it will affect our future. Nobody wants to make things more difficult for themselves later. Nobody wants to feel the pain of regret, or unhappiness because what they thought they wanted didn’t turn to be what they really wanted at all.

I struggle to make decisions just as much as everyone else in the world. I would even say that making the wrong decision is a fear of mine. Opportunities come and go, but I don’t know which ones to take, and which ones to let pass me by. I only do my best to try to create a future that will make me happiest.

When we are young, we "know" what we want to be. It is usually a career that is quite difficult (sometimes nearly impossible) to achieve. When we get to high school and have to begin thinking about what we’d like to study or what other paths we may take, we become a bit more realistic. When I was 12, I was so sure of becoming a doctor but as I reached high school, I knew that I just wasn’t cut out for medical school. The career sounded interesting and fulfilling, but chemistry and biology just weren’t areas of study that I had any interest in. That dream had died out (with good reason).

Senior year of high school, I began applying to different colleges, which was a difficult decision in and of itself. I applied to six different universities, three being in my home state of Texas, and three elsewhere. I was about to begin my studies, but I still had no idea of my future career or what I wanted to study in college. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be stationary. I wanted to be able to relocate, internationally if I could. It was a dream of mine (and still is). Because of that, I decided to take my first years as a young adult to the east coast. It would turn out to be just a small taste of what it would be like to move away from home.

Like many others, I didn’t go into college knowing exactly what I wanted to do or who I wanted to be. After spending my first year as an International Studies major, I decided that I wanted to be studying communication. Communication would take my love of writing and creativity, and bring it into real world situations. Even when writing a journalistic article, you use your creativity to portray the topic you are writing about, with the hope that the person on the other end will take interest. I have my own sense of control (to a certain extent) as well. A piece of writing doesn’t have to be written in a specific or particular way. Everything you write has a taste of your own voice in it, which is very appealing to me. I want to incorporate my career with my passions for the rest of my life.

It wasn’t soon later that I had come to conclusion that my dream job was to become an author. Of course, we all need a plan B in addition to our dream job, as our dream job is often farfetched and more difficult to achieve. You don’t just decide one day that you are going to quit everything to become a pop star. You must take baby steps to reach your goals. The most important one of mine is to always make time to write. If I don’t spend time writing in my free time, I will never come close to my goal. I can’t just "follow" my dream; I must live it.

I do think it’s important to be realistic. You can’t dive headfirst into just any body of water without testing its depth first. You could get lucky, but chances are that you won’t be successful the first time. I know that I won’t become an author overnight, just as no one has become a musician or athlete over night. It takes time and dedication to get the results you desire.

One of the best (if not the best) decisions I’ve made in my college career so far was applying as a writer for the Four Years at the Mount section of this paper. I feel lucky every time I write an article knowing that someone else in the world is taking their time to read my thoughts. I feel like I’m constantly making progress. My growing understanding of the structure and organization of a newspaper is just a step into what I hope to learn as a Communication major to help boost me into my career in just a few short years.

It’s happened to me many times before that I’ve thought something bad happened, but it had more positive effects than negative. An example I use often is the time I was in seventh grade and didn’t get a commendable score on my state reading test (by one point), resulting in me having to take an additional semester of reading instead of beginning at the basic level of Spanish. Although I was left disappointed, if I hadn’t taken that reading class, I never would have met my best friend, who sat across the table from me. If I hadn’t had to take reading, I would have taken Spanish and probably never would have taken French in high school. If I never took French in high school, I likely wouldn’t be working towards a French Studies major and wouldn’t have spent the summer studying abroad in Europe. The chain goes on and on. Today, I would gladly take the disappointment of having to take a reading class in seventh grade than missing out on the amazing experiences I’ve had with my knowledge and experience with the French language and with my best friend. The same thing goes for decisions, if you feel like you made a poor decision long ago, remember that decisions that are bad on the surface may not be so bad after all.

I won’t end up exactly where I think I want to be, but I know it will be exactly where I’m supposed to be. Despite my fear of making the wrong decisions, I have the overwhelming feeling that everything will be okay in the long run. Life is a chain of events, dependent on what came previously. It is out of my control, but that’s okay.

Read other articles by Morgan Rooney