Discovery

I got to pretend I was on the school board in class on Tuesday!!

I know you are probably like “What the heck is she talking about?”. Well, our teacher gave us the opportunity to create an English major for a fake college that he made up himself. I was placed in a group with three other wonderful girls and together we discussed the types of English classes we would be interested in and how we would want the program to work. We choose mandatory classes that we believed were crucial to English majors such as Shakespeare and poetry. Then we discussed having a literature track and a writing track for students who wanted focal points in their areas of interest. The process was fun and rewarding, and even though it was fake, I felt that I had more of a voice.

Having a voice is really what I got out of that lesson on Tuesday. Institutions often forget to make sure that their student body is being heard, believing that the development and future of the college need only be handled by the administration and staff. But I know if I am the one getting an education, I want to think that I have a say in what my classes are how the program is developed! Then I would feel even better about my program and my involvement as a student. 

I believe that my teacher was giving me a taste of that voice in class, but I also think he was giving me one throughout the whole semester. Our small group discussions and his constant encouragement of our ideas and opinions made me feel even better about myself and what I had to say. Of course, the class was so small that discussion was incredibly easy, but I still think that strategy can be incorporated into bigger classroom settings as well.

I think peer feedback, anytime I’ve done it in school, has been very beneficial to me as a writer. Not only can a classmate correct little areas in your paper, but he or she also acts as the audience you are trying to persuade or inform. If the paper is uninteresting or confusing to your reviewer, then the essay needs revision; if your editor can’t comprehend your writing then neither will your audience, making the piece of writing pointless. I think Everet did a solid job editing my paper. He explained how the paper could have been mapped out in a way that was more organized for my readers to understand. 

We all have our escape from reality, but we can only run so far from the pain, the mundane, and the disappointment that nips at our heels. In So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell writes a somewhat fictional, somewhat real memoir on events during his childhood (Apparently the author believes that not all his memories are accurate, haha). There is a place in the story where Maxwell goes to play and eventually meets his friend Cletus. This place is a partial frame of a house with strange artwork on the inside, possibly built by a group of artists, and here Maxwell can forget about his mother’s death, his father’s remarriage, and his struggles in school and use his imagination for hours on end. This act of falling in love with his imagination is a form of escape from his current circumstances that anyone can relate to. But… Is the act of escaping in order to avoid problems unhealthy or perfectly normal? We all feel the need to escape at one moment or another and we all do so in different ways whether it is through imagination, television, video games, and maybe even addictions. There is a healthy balance between escaping too much and too little that both exercises creativity and relieves stress without becoming a complete avoidance of problems. I have experienced the negative and positive aspects of escape in my own life, observed the problems of escapism in general, and evaluated the overall benefits of escapism, and included some of my own advice on the concept of escapism.

Has Peter Pan ever inspired you to fly to Neverland by jumping as high as you could on your trampoline? Now that was certainly a possible and real form of escape for my nine-year-old self, believing that flying was possible for anyone who had strong enough faith in magic and wonder, just as Peter said himself, “You just have to believe.” I was an imaginative child (probably too much so haha) and I can relate to Maxwell’s childhood desire to escape. At school, I was rambunctious and energetic, but when I was by myself my imagination took flight. When life got hard and boring, it was so easy to escape into a fantasy book or an imaginary world where I was the onlooker of an enjoyable adventure. Those blissful times of escape allowed me to develop into a storyteller and a creative thinker by forming storylines and characters in my mind, teaching me to think with complexity. But there was something about chasing lions and rescuing princesses that helped me to forget, allowing imagination to become a source of hope with suffering on the back burner, a fake light, a fraud until reality came knocking. Now imagination is good, but reality shouldn’t come knocking. Imagination should help you understand and make sense of reality rather run from it. My desire to escape got me into trouble in school. I never turned my work in on time because I was too busy staring out a window or wading through my own thoughts. At times I would get so lost in my own thoughts that my teacher would ask me a question with complete clarity and my response would be, “What?” and the teacher would constantly have to repeat herself because I struggled to drag myself away from my imaginative world. Escape is not necessarily bad, but at times it did take me away from the moment and kept me from learning effectively. There were also times, more so when I got older, when I would read several books in a week or binge on Netflix episodes instead of focusing on my relationships and responsibilities. These bingeing tendencies tend to take us away from our own stories and realities when not handled in moderation, and upon seeing that tendency in myself, I strove to be free from it.

Escape can take form not only in imagination and mind wandering but also in the form of an enjoyable outlet; however, such outlets can develop into negative habits when not handled in moderation. We do it all the time in our culture whether we believe it to be healthy or not. We devour Netflix seasons by night and consume YouTube clips by day. We leave our homes to sit in movie theaters and obsess over fantasy football from our couches. And after all this consumption and escape, are we not left feeling empty? I know I am. No matter how many times we try to escape and find fulfillment in our own imaginations we must always face reality again. People want to be part of every adventure except their own, even though their own is the most unique, interesting, and real. We are not courageous in dealing with grief, pain, and unmet expectations; instead of fixing problems we escape and escaping becomes an addiction and a crutch that we depend on instead of God, family, and work. Deadly forms of escape include serious addictions such as drugs and alcohol that destroy lives instead of acting as a healthy outlet for problems that need to be addressed. On Psychology Today, the following observation was noted about the effect of alcohol on relationships, “Alcohol abuse can affect your body both inside and out. Even though you’re unable to see the damage drinking causes to your internal organs, it’s important not to ignore the warning signs of alcoholism,” (78). There is certainly a negative effect of this extreme form of escapism that can destroy the lives of people rather than provide them the comfort and stress relief they need. Alcohol creates many more problems than it solves and is not a form of escapism worth depending on. Constant dependence on alcohol or other drugs not only affects the individual negatively but also family members and the workplace. Overall, escapism can be negative and very dangerous when abused or used out of moderation

Edgar Allen Poe reflects positively on the idea of escaping and dreaming by day, “Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret.” Poe believes that those who escape daily into their daydreams are on the verge of understanding something great and wonderful, unseen by those who only dream during the night, allowing creativity to flourish and wisdom to grow. Just as Poe claims, escape allows us to dream and hope, allowing some of the greatest ideas to grow, fester, and form into the most world-renowned books and spectacular inventions. David Feldman writes in Psychology Today “For many kids, fantasies form a basis for social activity with their friends, a way to explore their interests, and a vehicle for engaging in creative pursuits like drawing or storytelling.” There is a positive and effective side of escape that allows the mind to wander and discover the most incredible, creative solutions. Maxwell is the perfect example of the positive use of escape. He portrays himself as a dreamer with a big imagination, and that trait has certainly made him extremely successful. Along with dreaming, escape helps us to tolerate our current situations. Not that we should always escape current situations or resign ourselves to depending on negative forms of escape, but we all need an outlet of enjoyment as well. Maxwell certainly had reason to want to escape his situation with the pain he experienced, and I believe other people can from painful experiences can agree as well.

Escapism is part of reality, with both positive and negative forms; but how can we apply a balanced view of escapism into our everyday lives? In my life, I have tried to move toward more positive forms of escapism that are self-feeding and non-addictive. I was totally a Netflix binger and a romance book reader throughout my high school years, but those endeavors were fruitless to me as a person and after a few years I adapted different interests. Still being a book lover, I decided to focus on authors I could depend on for worthy content such as C.S. Lewis and Francine Rivers, whose books were deep and thought-provoking rather than only adventuresome and happy. Journaling also became an escape for me as I entered college. It was a harder hobby for me to learn, but it has become a habit now in my second year of college. Journaling allows me to escape circumstances while evaluating them at the same time, and when I look back at what I write, I feel that I am understanding myself as a person more and more. These changes in my own hobbies have been extremely helpful but here are some tips on escapism that I would recommend:

·       Avoid addictive forms of escapism. Drugs and alcohol are obvious forms to avoid, but even television shows can be addictive. Exploring social media and watching YouTube videos are also addictive tendencies that can leave you entertained for hours.

·       Focus on growth. Influence yourself positively with forms of escape such as reading, writing, exercising, starting a garden, and cooking. Such endeavors not only allow you to form a new skill, but they help you develop virtues such as patience and focus.

·       Escape for the Right Reasons. Escaping to avoid making decisions or to procrastinate on work will not solve problems. Escape should be time set aside to relax away from life’s stressors, for reflection and growth.

 Escape into imagination and entertainment can be wonderful but also preventative against the onset of reality, but with a balanced approach to the concept one can have incredibly creative and stress relieving results. We escaped our lives as children and we still escape as adults. We go from imaginative play in our backyards and streets to video games in musty basements, to sports teams playing in large arenas. Sometimes we escape too much and other times not enough, but no matter what our experience happens to be, it certainly opens our minds to idealize for something exciting and wonderful and maybe even possible.

 Works Cited

https://www.alcoholrehabguide.org/alcohol/effects/

Growing up, I didn’t always notice how books impacted my life, the way I thought and approached problems, navigated relationships, and saw the world.

One of the first series my parents read to me as a child was The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. The books and the movie were my favorites as a child and I always remember feeling comforted by Aslan’s voice in each of the seven books. Forming the story of Christianity into an allegory of animals, witches, and magical creatures has a way of making sense to a child who only thinks through their imagination. Narnia was a great introduction to my faith.

My reading excelled when I started reading the Warrior Cat Series as a 5th grader. I’ve always loved cats ever since I was a little girl and such a creative and popular series based on my favorite animal was so exciting to me at that time. I fell in love with reading after reading these books. I scoured the internet, to find likeminded, crazy Warrior cat finds like myself! When I did, I spent hours writing fanfiction about cats, and reading the fanfiction of other users on the website. From that point on I my desire to devour other books only grew. 

In my freshman English class we read To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee. I don't know how much this book influenced me as a whole, but there was always one quote that has always stuck with me. Atticus tells Scout, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” I truly believe this quote has helped me be less judgement towards people and consider their perspective with compassion and sincerity. 

William Maxwell titled one of his most famous books “So Long, See You Tomorrow”.

What is the significance behind such a title?

In the novel, the narrator is a young boy who plays in the frame of an unfinished house. This narrator then meets another young boy named Cletus who joins him on his adventures and every time the two boys leave for home they always say, “So Long, See You Tomorrow.” 

But then one tomorrow arrives, and Cletus never shows up. 

How does the title of this novel relate to real life? I think it’s interesting how often we say to each other “See you tomorrow” or “See you later” believing that we will see people “tomorrow” or “later” for the rest of our lives. We rarely stop to consider whether we will really see that person again or not because most of the time we always do see them again. There is an expectation that our lives with people will always carry into the future, but reality is, people move, die, graduate, and get fired sometimes very suddenly and then our tomorrow with those people are over.

Many people believe saying goodbye is sadder compared to saying see you later. A farewell that includes hope for the future becomes more of a promise rather than a simple goodbye. It is a sweet way of saying “Our lives together aren’t finished!” even though none of us really know with a hundred percent certainty whether we will be around tomorrow.

As childre,n we have many encounters with people like the narrator did with Cletus. We have friends that we played with in school or in the neighborhood that one day disappeared or moved for reasons we can only speculate on now. All that is left of those kids is a black and white photograph in the school yearbook, and yet as children we cannot comprehend the significance of people coming and leaving our life until we look back and reflect. 

Writers starve for love of their work but aren’t they also starving for something else? There is a hunger within a writer that can only be satisfied within the pages of a notebook. This starvation stems from a sense of deprivation inside all great writers, rumbling within their stomach, aching within their soul, pulling at the fabric of their mind until they vomit their ideas all over the page. 

More than just an ache though, this deprivation is a missing piece from the writer's life. Many times this piece is something the author has missed from life such as true love, purpose, adventure, family. Recreating these desires through art is the only true way the author can attain them. 

My deprivation is a desire for complete knowledge. I tend to be the girl with all the questions and no answers, a curious and open-minded child that craves understanding in a very complex world. Writing is a way for me to create answers to my questions, or at least imagine how God would answer them according to what the Bible says. It is my way of attempting to create my own wisdom. 

If you are a writer, what is your deprivation? My professor said in class, “All great writers have some type of deprivation” which I don’t think is necessarily true in every case, but I think it is helpful in driving writers to create something meaningful that other people are deprived of as well. 

We all have our escape from reality, but we can only run so far from the pain, the mundane, and the disappointment that nips at our heels.

In So long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell writes a somewhat fictional, somewhat real memoir on events during his childhood (Apparently the author believes that not all his memories are accurate haha). There is a place in the story where Maxwell goes to play and eventually meets his friend Cletus. This place is a partial frame of a house with strange artwork on the inside, possibly built by a group of artists, and here Maxwell can forget about his mother’s death, his father’s remarriage, and his struggles in school and use his imagination for hours on end.

I can relate to Maxwell’s desire to escape, especially when I look back on my own childhood. At school, I was rambunctious and energetic, but when I was by myself my imagination took flight. When life got hard and boring, it was so easy to escape into a fantasy book or an imaginary world where I was the onlooker of an enjoyable adventure. There is something about chasing lions and rescuing princesses that helped me to forget, allowing imagination to become a source of hope with suffering on the back burner, a fake light, a fraud until reality came knocking.

Escape can become a negative habit. We do it all the time in our culture whether we believe it to be healthy or not. We devour Netflix seasons by night and consume YouTube clips by day. We leave our homes to sit in bleachers and obsess over fantasy football. And after all this consumption and escape, are we not left feeling empty? I know I am. No matter how many times we try to escape and find fulfillment in our own imaginations we must always face reality again. People want to be part of every adventure except their own, even though their own is the most unique, interesting, and real. People are not as courageous as heroes and dealing with the grief and pain they wish to conquer in their own life becomes too hard.

Escape can also be wonderful and helpful. Escape allows us to dream and hope, allowing some of the greatest ideas to grow, fester, and form into the most world-renowned books and spectacular inventions. Maxwell portrays himself as a dreamer with a big imagination, and that trait has certainly made him extremely successful. And along with dreaming, escape helps us to tolerate our current situations. Not that we should always escape current situations, but we all need an outlet of enjoyment as well. Maxwell certainly had reason to want to escape his situation with the pain he experienced, and I believe many other children from broken homes can agree.

Imagine a world of opportunities lining up at your doorstep. All your dreams and hopes for the future in one place, waiting for you to choose, begging you to step outside your comfort zone, to take a risk for fulfillment and purpose as if God is prompting to you make your dreams a reality.

In other words... Welcome to a Career Fair!!!

I had an opportunity at my college, Bethel University, to attend this fair that is available for all the college students on campus. Business, schools, missions organizations, summer camps, hospitals, were spread out all around our gymnasium with candies, brochures, and signup sheets available for exciting summer jobs and fulfilling life long careers. I browsed many of the tables that were available and I talked mostly to camps looking for camp counselors for the summer months. The fun temporary jobs were more fun for me to browse.

Career Fairs are offered by many colleges and universities. I would recommend that all students take the opportunity to attend events such as these, to begin thinking about their future and to see all the options available for them. Many people pray for their futures in hopes that their dreams will come true, but how often do people get to explore those dreams and meet people that will help achieve them? 

In my English class, we discussed Good Country People, a short story by Flannery O'Connor.

Flannery O'Connor does a phenomenal job in this story of hilariously mocking and making a joke of the wealthy in the south, of people who continually look down on others. Accumulation of knowledge dosen’t always equal wisdom and understanding. Sometimes knowledge makes people more short-sighted, causing people to place their own value and opinions over those who don’t have the same education and prestige.

There is a moment in this story when one of the “good country people” or in other words a poor and less educated individual, tricks a wealthy educated woman, and while doing this, plucks the woman's glasses off her face and slips them into his pocket.

I think this moment really symbolizes a change in perspective that sometimes we all need. All of us can get narrowminded, especially about something we think we know a lot about, and it takes another person or event to pluck the glasses off our face. Knowledge and wisdom are not the same, and usually, wisdom encompasses lots of humility, something that even many of the world’s scholars don’t have.

Where is it in your life that you need to have the glasses plucked from your face? Where do you need a change in perspective?

Is it possible to regain our innocence?

In a previous post I wrote about single moments and periods when we feel our innocence is being taken from us, but now I want to ask the question: Is it possible to become a child once we are already grown? The lighthearted joy and ignorant bliss of seeing only light and goodness in every corner of the world is a childlike quality people truly miss.

There is a song I listened to in my class about holding on to innocence called There is A Light by U2 and there were a few significant lines that stuck out to me,

“When all you left is leaving

And all you got is grieving

And all you know is needing

If there is a light, we can’t always see

If there is a world

We can’t always be

If there is a dark

Now we shouldn’t doubt

And there is a light

Don’t let it go out”

(Here is a link to the entire song on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n24ms5drtAg) 

Many of my classmates argued that although it is not possible to fully regain our childhood innocence, there is a childlike outlook that can be maintained. I think the lines of this song certainly suggest searching for that simple outlook, that light that may still be there beneath sorrow and hardship.

 I wrote a poem on this topic when I was in high school! The theme is very similar to the song above; it is about trying to remember the innocence we once had, and hoping it is still there despite all the disappointments of the world. I would like to share it!

 Do You Remember?

Do you remember when we were children? When the entire world was at our fingertips? We could fly to the farthest corner of the universe, stroll along yellow brick roads, swim to the lost city of Atlantis. We were invincible children, not helpless children. For us, believing was enough.

Do you remember when we were children? Any object in our hands was magic in our eyes. Every moment was the first day of spring, one flower blooming after another, each one more beautiful than the last. We ran through life with our eyes wide open, not a single detail escaping our grasp.

Do you remember when we were children? Each one of us was Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Mangelin, Marco Polo. In our minds, the new land was untouched by human hands. Nobody but us had climbed ageless mountains and explored dark caverns. Nothing was too old for fresh minds and adventurous hearts.

Do you remember when we were children? When we were free? We sailed along the treetops not worrying about where we landed or whether we would fall. We just kept flapping our wings until we wanted to do or be something else. We changed our surroundings when they tried to change us. Imagination was wherever we were.

Do you remember when we were children? Clothed in white, never leaving trails of red. There were no stains on the path behind, not that we could remember if they were there anyway. When everyone forgives you, mistakes are easy to forget.

Do you remember when we were children? Do you remember the sentence when I grow up? We had adventure but we thought the real journey was far from starting. We would stare down the long windy road imagining a palace ahead with servants and knights and ballrooms and magic and us asking of it all. But the crown we wanted is not there and the one we already had is lost. What we thought was freedom was bondage and we ran into it with eyes open far too wide. Now we see the empty universe, the cold days of winter, the used and worn land, the trails of red, and the scattered paths of a once windy road.

If only we had stayed with Peter Pan in Neverland.

Link to my podcast of this post below!

https://anchor.fm/michelle069/episodes/Innocence-in-the-Story-Black-Berry-Winter-e37jc9/a-aahpia

When was it that you felt your loss of innocence from childhood? Was it a single moment?

I asked myself these same questions as I read  Blackberry Winter by Robert Warren. The story focuses on the day of a young boy living on a farm in Tennessee during a very cold and wet month of June. The boy is, of course, innocent and doesn’t quite understand the poverty and illness his community is experiencing throughout the story; however, this suffering is much more obvious to the reader. In the end, this boy follows a tramp down the road and the man turns on him and says, “Stop following me. You don’t stop following me and I’ll cut yore throat, you little son-of-bitch.” The author then claims that the boy “followed that tramp” the rest of his days, metaphorically speaking of a moment where the author came to a realization of pain and fear.

When we discussed this story in my English class, there were many thoughts, different thoughts on the symbolism and meaning of the story. Some said quest. Others said a coming of age story…

My interpretation was a fall from grace, a loss of innocence.

The boy finally came to an understanding of his own pain and the pain of others. I find it fascinating that this boy experienced a single moment where the understanding of suffering dawned on him. All the sudden a veil was removed before him and he was not just seeing but really seeing. Seeing in a way that feels, empathizes, and understands the world with older eyes.

I don’t remember this single moment for myself, where I finally understood pain and realized not everything is happy-go-lucky. Most children are like rubber bands, their elasticity allows them to bounce back from situations but over time they lose that ability. That is how I began to lose my innocence. I slowly lost my elasticity over time as I was pulled and stretched, and as I was stretched, I saw more of the world, gaining painful but precious knowledge, not wanting to bounce back in my desire to reflect and understand.

Innocence is an interesting concept, and everyone experiences it differently. Some people might relate to that single moment, similar to the moment that boy had with the tramp in Blackberry Winter. Others might be like me and simply remember a progression of understanding. But no matter how you experience it, that fall from innocence certainly changes you.

file:///C:/Users/Michelle%20Moraitis/Downloads/Blackberry%20Winter%20(1).pdf (Blackberry Winter Story)

Wow, I feel like such an amateur when it comes to reading. 

In my college English class, we discussed two pieces of writing that we were assigned to read over the past few weeks. We were instructed to notice certain metaphors and symbols in these works of literature. There were a few things I noticed, but wow, after we discussed I realized almost everything is a metaphor and I overlooked almost all of them. 

Anyway, I know I will get better with time (hopefully), but I did want to reflect on a certain metaphor that was a particular point of discussion. In one of the stories we read, a boy enjoying the beach during summer vacation attempts the frightening task of swimming through an underwater tunnel to make it to the other side of a large rock. The boy spends his entire summer trying to accomplish this feat and finally can hold his breath long enough to swim through this tunnel at the end of the story. The tunnel is a metaphorical birth canal that the boy travels through. Being reborn to a new perspective or experience, this rite of passage changes this boy in some new way. 

After we discussed the story in class, we shared the different tunnels in our own lives. We talked about what experiences we felt compelled to do or accomplish no matter how difficult, long, and tasking they might be. There have been many tunnels that I have already conquered, but there is one, in particular, I have dreamed about for a while now. 

I want to write and publish a book.

I have had a vivid imagination since I was a child, always planning out characters, plots, worlds, and universes in my mind that will certainly strangle me if I don’t breathe them into existence. Writing a book would be very difficult, but I think it is the next major tunnel I’m compelled to pass through. I’ve already hand-written a full book on four different notebooks, so I know that I can write a full-length book but writing something worth publishing is a whole different story. 

I'm excited for what the future holds and I hope I have many more tunnels to conquer ahead! 

No text message, phone call, social media site, Skype, or discussion forum can compare to a real, old fashion face to face conversation. I personally think the ability to discuss and bounce ideas off each other in a live group setting is more special and enjoyable. However, after some of my recent experiences with online discussion boards, I am beginning to think there are more benefits than I previously thought.

In my Gateway to English Class we had our discussion in class the first week, the second-week class was canceled due to snow (Yahooooo!), and the third-week class was canceled again (YAHOOO!!), but because we missed too much class, we had an online discussion (Dang it...). I was a little nervous the first day of class and we didn’t have a ton of discussion time, so I didn’t say much, but I loved hearing everyone’s ideas and developing my own opinions from their thoughts. I’m really excited for more in class discussions as I get to know my fellow English majors more and I was disappointed I did not get that in class the past two weeks.

Online discussions are more focused and specific to the given topic or prompt, there is little room to branch off on to questions and side topics. They also are not helpful in developing relational skills which are crucial to most careers. In our online discussion during this freezing week, we were forced to reply to two other posts whether we found their post interesting or not, which I found to be much less genuine than responding to someone in a real conversation (but is probably necessary for online discussions). Despite being more rigid, there is a deeper sense of thinking and focus any time writing is involved in an exercise. In our class this week the prompt was about our favorite piece of advice from our book, How to Read Literature like a Professor, and I found myself really analyzing and taking time to understand my own reasonings before posting anything. In a normal conversation, I would give a short one-sentence explanation for my reasoning, but being forced to write a minimum of three hundred words on my own gave me time to dive deeper into my answer. 

If someone told me in high school that I would become an English teacher I would have laughed. For the longest time (since I was a sophomore in high school) I always thought I would become a nurse, but as of a week ago, I am now navigating a field I never thought I’d find myself in. I love to read and write and the art of language and the meaning behind stories have always fascinated me. Literature gives insight not only into the author’s mind, like the analogy during class of a book being the ax that breaks into the ice of our minds, but it also tells us something about the culture of a group during a certain time period. It reveals something about beliefs, philosophy, and politics. Literature opens doors to understanding that no other field can. I want to walk through those doors and understand the world from a thousand different perspectives and I want to teach those perspectives to others. 

I do find the constant loop of English teachers who just teach more upcoming English teachers a little funny. There may not be the opportunities in English that there are in fields of math and science, but to me, it is worth trying to do something I am passionate about it. I choose nursing because I wanted to help people, but I changed majors because reading and writing were also at the center of my heart. I wanted to utilize those skills in my profession and teaching allowed me to help others and use my passion.