Year from Now Contemplation: Advanced Composition

Stephanie’s Journey to Finding a College Major

The future was a stressful thing to think about.  The anxiety that it induced used to be traumatizing.  That paralyzing feeling I would get when the air could barely pass through my lungs, trapped in a never-ending state of panic.  I felt like I was drowning and no matter how hard I tried to stay afloat, I could not help but sink.  As a high school senior, college is right around the corner.  What a lovely, but scary thought to a teenager, especially one who felt already lost.  Every little test or paper from the past three years add up to grades that accumulate into a GPA.  That enough was the tipping point for my anxiety because of the constant pressure I would put on myself to do the best that I could.

I, Stephanie Sandra Gentile, was now a newly seventeen-year old senior in high school and a future college freshman.  Since I began high school, people always pestered me about what I wanted to do with my life.  I did not have the courage or confidence to tell them, “I still don’t know”.  I thought that by the time I became a senior, I would gain that courage and confidence because I would finally know.  That phrase lingered for the past couple years of high school and most of the summer leading up to my senior year because I still had not reached the life-altering decision about what I wanted to study in college and what path to pursue in my career. 

I had too many academic interests, which is why I felt so lost.  College applications list the option of “undecided” for your major.  Yet, I could not bear the thought of checking that box because I had some ideas just no final conclusion.  I was just having difficulty choosing because of my indecisive nature. I knew that science like biology, chemistry, or physics was not the route for me.  I could not let go of math just yet because I knew that I enjoyed the numerical process of getting to one correct answer.  I always was passionate about history because I loved reading about it and connecting it to current events. I loved how history told a story by providing background on why countries function the way they do.  The detail and analysis of history expanded my horizons on how various ideologies and cultures interacted and shaped events.  I liked the way that history taught me how to write and think, which slightly differed from writing for an English class.  There was persuasion involved in history, just like in a negotiation or an argument.

That summer before senior year, I enrolled in a psychology program at a nearby college.  I thought it would be interesting to learn about human behavior and about a subject that falls within the parameters of science but was not so technical.  The psychology program introduced me to predicting human actions and analyzing their behavior.  This approach connected to history because history analyzes the behavior of individuals and their ideologies in the past.  This program fascinated me and led me to the realization that history and psychology complement each other.  I came to the conclusion that these two academic disciplines would make the perfect combination for me. 

By understanding why humans behave the way they do, one has a better comprehension on how to diagnose and regulate their behavior.  My seventeen-year-old self no longer felt stranded or in a constant state of panic.  The ocean waves running over me were now light and gentle, easy to stay afloat. I knew what boxes to check in my college applications: history and psychology, two academic disciplines that combine all of my academic interests.

-Stephanie Sandra