Wasn't This Just For Fun? by Emma

Wasn't This Just For Fun? by Emma - September 2017 Scholarship Essay

Junior year - crunch time. The year that every student blinks and realizes that they suddenly have 20 new assignments. The year that I decided it would be fun to take a Psychology class.
I walked in knowing nothing, holding an empty binder waiting to be filled with information until it felt like a brick in my backpack each day. I had never taken a class relating to the topic before, and I had no idea what to expect. I was struck with the worry that I would have no idea what I was doing, that I would spend all year struggling to stay afloat in yet another class that I didn’t enjoy. Little did I know at the time, that thought would be the farthest thing from the truth.
What started as a fun class to take my mind off of the overwhelming stress of every other period slowly transformed into what I looked forward to most each day. I would pay attention in every class, sure, but I thrived in Psychology. Never before had I been so overcome with the desire to collect as much information as possible in a single period each day.
By the time the year ended, it was a beloved subject for me. It was impossible to go five minutes discussing next year’s schedules without me wholeheartedly recommending the class to anyone and everyone. It was hard to imagine leaving it behind. How could I spend all year pouring my heart into a subject, then simply turn around and never learn about it again? I couldn’t bear the thought of not having Psychology in my life any longer.
When asked what I wanted to do for college, I had never really considered what my major would be. I figured that, like so many others, I would simply head in undeclared, then pick something that paid well enough and get a job in that field. Yet suddenly my head was filled with the possibility of a life devoted to what I loved so much: Psychology. What had started as an elective was now the focus of my career path. That Psychology class defined not only my year, but became the high point of all of my education to this point.