2018-19 Year-in-Review
This past year was characterized by my self-reflection and how it impacts the way I see myself. Through both my two semesters at school and my one working for the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT), I have discovered multiple facets of my personality and environment that I have previously hidden from myself. While working for ODOT, I learned the importance of a healthy working environment with employees who actively support everyone else and who are genuinely nice people to be around, and that at Akron, this type of atmosphere was lacking. Also, I took my own advice from last year and, though I started work an hour earlier than last time, I chose a workplace with a much shorter commute (read: about half an hour away from my new apartment).
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However, as the year progressed, I seemed to be getting more and more stressed, and the heavy workload the past two semesters did not do anything to alleviate it, or if anything, the workload even exacerbated the stress. Through reflection, I learned several things about my stress, but most importantly, I learned that I have been "headbutting a brick wall," for lack of a better phrase, for a while, and after a couple of semesters of taking engineering classes with room for few other subjects that I seemed passionate about (and a couple of exceptions), I would tell myself that the tediousness of my previous engineering classes would not apply to later classes and that I would eventually become passionate for at least one of my core classes. Sure, there were a couple that I found enjoyable, but no engineering course really impassioned me, and the workload caused more stress than it was worth, even with me enjoying the previous semester working for ODOT. Tastes change, after all; if it took me this long to realize that engineering is no longer right for me, so be it.
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As a result, I'm planning on taking next semester easy (after taking one more to work for ODOT) with courses in subjects that I have previously found captivating, such as music theory, and Italian. Hopefully through my course selection next semester I will learn what it is I actually want to pursue in life now that I am no longer as passionate about engineering: to stay on my current path and tough it out, to switch to something I know I enjoy, or to explore something else entirely.
