Why I'm Going To College

I had this whole post written up about why I'm going to college, how it's never too late to follow your dreams, yada, yada, yada. And now that I'm ready to make the official announcement...I'm not going to post it. Because as time has gone on, I've felt the conviction that I just need to be real with y'all. This is not my dream.

See, if my life went the way I'd planned it, I'd have gotten married at 22, started having kids pretty much right away, I'd be selling lots of books, have a solid, steady music studio, and be looking forward to being a homeschool mom once my kids get old enough. As it is, I'm 25 and still solidly single and childless, book sales are difficult to sustain, between COVID, kids growing up, and families moving away my music studio has dwindled (though I'm still incredibly grateful for the students I still have), and being a homeschool mom is nowhere in sight.

I've never been against college as an institution. All I've been against is shoving everyone into college when that's not the right path for everyone. I believe we should all discover what God wants us to do, and then get the training/jump through the hoops to do that. For some that's college. For others it's technical school. For some that might look more like learning a trade in an old fashioned apprenticeship-style method. For some that might be getting married at 22, becoming a mom right away, and using abilities in the arts to work from home.

And there might be different methods for different stages of life.

I know I wasn't supposed to go to college straight out of high school. For one thing, if I had, I'd probably have majored in something like creative writing, which tbh, would be pretty useless for paying rent and putting food on the table. And I'd still be looking at going back now for something more useful. I've learned a lot in these past seven years since my high school graduation. I've learned a lot about violin, about writing, about book design, about people, about teaching, about life, about myself, and most importantly about God. And I've learned it in a way that I couldn't have if I'd gone straight to college. So while I often wish that I'd come to this decision sooner so I wouldn't have to go through college now, I don't regret the path God has taken me through, particularly in the last six years since we moved from my childhood home. Has it been easy? Not at all. Has some of it been painful? You bet. But I look back on all the people I've had in my life in these years (even if only for a short while), at the things I've done and learned and the lives I've touched at the library, of the various music students I've taught, of the friendships I've built, of the books I've written, and I wouldn't exchange it for anything.

But it's time to move into that next stage of life.

I'm not giving up writing. I'm never giving up writing. In fact, I firmly believe that God prevented me from pursuing this path two years ago when I first started to seriously consider it because I would have been giving up writing and running away from everything that was making life difficult and painful. Now, I have a different attitude. Writing is a calling God placed on me when I was a child, and it's something that I can't walk away from. But so is teaching. And while I love teaching music and intend to keep doing it as long as God allows, I know it's not the extent to which I am supposed to teach.

So what am I doing and why?

I'm going to Kennesaw State University, starting this fall, to major in elementary ed, with the intention of completing the degree in three years. I'm also planning to CLEP out of several classes this summer, so even though I don't technically start until mid August, I'm already studying.

And why? Well, I can't deny that part of it is financial. Reality is, as much as I love the library, it just doesn't pay enough to sustain a single income household, and I don't think it's right for me to expect my dad to foot the majority of my bills indefinitely just because my life choices result in an income too small for me to live on my own. Being female doesn't give me the right to expect someone else to pay for my life, particularly as a single woman. We're not called to idleness. I mean, look at the Proverbs 31 woman. She had several successful home businesses.

But the bigger thing is, this is where God is leading me for this next phase of my life. How long will it be? I have no idea. Does God have marriage and children in my future at all? I also have no idea. But what I do know is that God has given me an ability and a desire to teach children, and that in more than just music, and I can't just let that fall by the wayside because God hasn't put me in a place where I have my own children to homeschool. So it's time to jump through those hoops and get the training needed to teach elementary school. And it's time for me to really trust God that He knows what He's doing with my life, even if it's the complete opposite of what I always expected.

And don't worry, I'm still working on Acktorek 2: The Vanished, albeit slowly. I really can't make any promises on timeline, but I'm not going to abandon it and I really am hoping to somehow get this one out while I'm still in school. But again, I can't make any promises because I just don't know how things are going to play out.

In closing, I want to share with you a song that's really meant a lot to me over the last year or so. God really does know what He's doing.

Now I'm off to go relearn logarithms for this algebra CLEP.