People Pleasing vs. Passion by Leah

People Pleasing vs. Passion by Leah - December 2022 Scholarship Essay

Life is full to the brim with lessons, as was 2022. My goals for my future suddenly shifted when I learned I would never become a math teacher. My plan for years was to teach math. However, I recently came to understand just how much pain math has caused throughout my life. I am not meant to teach a subject I only loved for the praise.
This year, I decided to take a calculus course, and no matter how much I tried to love it the way I had loved past math courses, I could never finish all the homework without bursting into tears. I have loved most of my previous math courses, and gotten A’s in all of them, but this specific course destroyed me like no other had. I just could not understand the topics, and mediocre test scores were agonizing on top of the anguish finishing the homework each night caused.
So I decided, firmly and resolutely, that math was not really my thing. My awards through competitions and the praise I had always received for being “smart” were nothing compared to my deteriorating mental health. Finding balance in my life is more important than completing a math course I hate taking. So for 2023, I decided to drop my calculus course. I decided to find something I am more passionate about and pursue that as my new career path after college.
As I thought back on my time in school, it dawned on me, my true love has always been English, not math. As a young girl growing up in the semi-rural Midwest, reading was my first love. Reading allowed me to visit new worlds I would never otherwise experience. However, my passion in the English field is not limited to reading. Above all, my love for editing stands out as something I wish to continue exploring in my career.
My current coursework in my college-level English course includes time in which we edit and look over our own and other people’s papers. This time allowed me to find I both love editing and am gifted at giving rhetorical and grammatical critiques of other’s papers. Because of the passion I have for editing and helping improve other’s work, I want to one day become a book editor. I am glad to have found my passion and steered myself away from a life doing what I thought everyone else wanted me to do.