Once The Pressure Is Gone by Imara

Once The Pressure Is Gone by Imara - July 2014 Scholarship Essay

I have been blessed with a number of really good teachers in my life. And up until this time last year, I would have thought that many of them were great teachers. That was, until I took a class with Professor Beatty. I had never met someone who pushed and pulled with students as much as she did. The class wasn’t purely a taking experience, we were expected to give as well: our thoughts, our opinions, our personal research and experiences, were all relevant.

That is something that tends to be expected at the college level. However, it was when I went to speak with her after hours that Professor Beatty really shone. To explain, some clarification is necessary. As a student in college, I am faced with the normal questions from family members, such as what are you majoring in? What do you want to do when you’ll grow up? How will you make money after you graduate? Unconsciously, not wanting to disappoint my family, I was gravitating towards fields that I wasn’t particularly interested in, but nevertheless knew would make sense to their ears. Architecture. Economics. Psychology. These are all fields that the average person has a frame of reference form.

So when I went to Professor Beatty’s office in October for an unrelated matter, she asked me conversationally which classes I was enjoying this semester. I answered back that while I was enjoying most of them, her’s especially, I really could not bring myself to truly like art history or math – two courses required for my architecture major. She looked at me, aghast. “Why on earth would you decide on a major now?” she asked. “Take your time. You have four years ahead of you, and a year and a half until you have to make that decision. Find out what you like, and the major and the job will follow.”

Since I have always been a self-motivated, education loving individual, I never thought there was anything that needed to be changed about my viewpoints. However from that moment on I saw with crystal clarity that external factors had been motivating me to succeed. Family. College. A career. These were the reasons I could never really say for sure what my favorite class was in high school. I got decent grades, so what was the point?

Yet, after that I started to pay attention to what I really liked and what I didn’t. It turned out that I really liked Foreign Languages, History, and Education. Luckily for me, thanks in part to Professor Beatty’s advice, I have found a way to mesh the three in a way that will hopefully bode well for my interests in the future. At eighteen, I thought that I knew everything there was to know about me and my education. I was glad to be proven wrong. So now it takes a little explaining to my family about why I would want to major in History, and what on earth I am going to do after I graduate. But since I like what I am studying, there will be a way for me to work that all out – later.