DREAMER 

          Through many years of scraped knees and snotty noses, I have manage to stay alive long enough to make it to college. College has always been a dream of mine, more so it has always been a dream of my parents. Growing up in an Italian and Hispanic household, my parents were not so fond of the idea of me running away with the circus, but instead enforced the idea of a good education. ​Now, I will never forgive my parents for crushing my dream of becoming an acrobat but I am forever grateful for the opportunity they have given me to go to college. My sister and I are the first generation in our family to be able to attend college. This being a blessing and also a curse left me feeling that the only thing I could do in college that would satisfy my family was to become a doctor- just like my sister. My sister has always been an idol of mine but when she told me she was going to become a doctor, I knew that she was going to be crowned the golden child. Now don't get me wrong I love that my sister is going into the medical field, she just left me with some big shoes to fill. My father told me repeatedly that I should think about going into the medical field. I spent months before my first semester of college trying to convince myself that I loved blood and guts. Oddly enough though, my body seemed to disagree with me. The thought of cutting into someone made me so queasy that I couldn't bare the thought of having to take three more years of hearing about the human body just to get my bachelors. Then the thought of medical school also frightened me to the point of having nightmares about it. Finally I talked to my very traditional Italian father about a different career choose, something a less nauseating. The thought of telling my father that I wanted to be a teacher pained me- I could only imagine how I would be disowned from my family.

         On the contrary, my father didn't disown or summon me to the underworld, he simply told me that he didn't feel that this was a good career choice for me and to keep my options open. Once I arrived at FSU I declared my major as exploratory, hoping that this would guide me to the light that I needed to pick a major. I enrolled in an introduction to education class just to test the waters and see if I really wanted to deal snot dripping seven year olds the rest of my life. This course was my favorite class last semester and I found out I didn't want to teach snotty seven year olds, but crabby teenagers. There was still an uncertainty of whether I wanted to become a teacher or not that left me unsatisfied and wanting more answers. I then choose to talk to a professional, my aunt who is a first grade teacher in Fort Lauderdale Florida. She told me of all the amazing rewards that come with teaching, but then proceeded to tell me all the disadvantages about it. I thought that the conversation was going no where until she said these two words "speech pathology." I never considered becoming a speech pathologist until I had that conversation with my aunt. She opened a door for me that I didn't even know existed. Over the winter break I spent time back in my home town, Orlando FL, researching speech pathology.  Although I am still not one hundred percent sure if I want to do this, I believe college is the time for figuring out who you are and what you want from life. But it is very likely that I will be doing something along the lines of speech pathology. I then talked to my father about this and his words eased because he thinks this is something I can excel in and still get to do what I want- make an impact in a child's life.