My fall quarter final exams have officially come to an end. Moment entering exam: I can handle this. I've spent countless hours solidifying my understanding of the material. Walking out of exam: Eyes are disoriented, face expressionless, and ultimately looking like a defeated soldier.
Many college students may be able to empathize with me on those cringe-worthy post-final exam moments. Those moments are worthy of great reflection and pondering. It makes me question whether or not I made the right decision to apply to college as an Electrical Engineering major, and if deciding to stick with engineering was a wise decision. All throughout last year, my emotions surrounding my decision to pursue engineering were contradicting on entirely different ends of the spectrum. Sometimes I felt incredibly inspired by the progress and incredible changes engineering has brought to our culture. Google Doodles' Grace Hopper feature gave me the necessary motivation to discipline myself and surge through studying for my exams. Other times, I feel completely out of place. Despite focusing every ounce of energy to the professor during lecture, reviewing and previewing material, and sacrificing sleep to further my studies, I constantly feel unable to master course material. I thought this was a plague for my first year of college, but even as I complete one quarter of my second year, I'm uneasy.
I started this quarter feeling motivated. I was excited to take my first class that began with the label "Electrical Engineering" and believed I had developed better habits and learned lessons from my previous year in college. And now, at the end of fall quarter, I still question whether or not all these struggles with few desirable results are worthwhile of my time and endeavors. It's no secret that engineering school has the reputation of being strenuous and arduous. Some people find it worthwhile. Others wish they had chosen a different career path. Me? I don't know. My feelings vary on a weekly basis. From experience, I have no doubt that there is no satisfaction or joy in a task until I have accomplished it and can perform it to the best of my ability. But being in the fast-paced quarter system, understanding a plethora of physical, mathematical, and circuitry phenomena in a short 10 weeks and being expected to retain this information with only partial understanding are not reasonable goals I should be setting for myself. Moreover, being female in a primarily male-dominated field further increases the chances of my discouragement. There are countless moments in this quarter when I look around my EE class, see no more than 8 other women in the classroom, notice male students staring at female students, and feel ridiculously self-conscious.
After every final exam this week, I have stopped to take some time to worry about the future and connect it to the pathetic and glorious acts I have done in the past. Finals are supposed to be the time for me to concentrate on mastering what I've learned this quarter, but the stress that comes with it has only made me worry more about everything other than finals themselves. I've craved therapeutically blogging and writing in my journal for the past two weeks, but incessant worrying under the demand to study for exams have caused me to become fuzzy-headed and even more conflicted.
But if I were to drastically change my life path, wouldn't I have more challenges to face? More complaints? Wishing I had done this instead of that?
Time to focus on the present and take one step at a time. I need to take baby steps and re-evaluate myself.
The worst part is realizing (as I wrote the previous sentence) how many times I have told myself that I need to re-evaluate each little choice I make in life that can boil the strongest emotions within me.
It's like a never-ending cycle.
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