Friday, September 23, 2011

Jumping Out of the Box

I am a psychology major. It took me a long time to get to this point, but now that I am here, I feel pretty confident in my (hopefully) final choice of a degree. It is fun having a main focus in school now! My classes are becoming more alike and I have pretty much weaved through all the classes that have me thinking, "Why am I here?" all semester long. The interesting but almost scary thing about it all, is that I find myself consistently thinking in ways that involve A LOT more out-of-the-box thinking.
I am basically taking psychology and philosphy based classes right now. Can you imagine how much thinking goes through my head in one day?! LOTS. I sit in one class where I am learning to question everything I believe (don't worry, it isn't a class designed to change my beliefs), and then I sit in another where I learn that optimism is a pretty naive way to look at life.
But I love optimism!
I guess this is what growing up feels like. Where we start to learn that learning involves so much more than math, science, and english. Learning is so much more than knowing how to draw the structure of an organic compound or writing a paper on the most influential person in my life. No, learning isn't black and white. Learning well isn't about getting that A I wanted on my test.
Learning is scary and uncomfortable.
But I love this uncomfortable state of contemplating life's great mysteries and questions.
As an example often used in classes similar these, the questions, "When does one become an adult? When did you know you were woman? What classifies one as an adult?" always happen to come up. I think that I would say that I am finally starting to find myself becoming more of woman.