Being a student is more than just sitting in a classroom, taking notes, clicking a pen and glancing at the clock every five seconds, waiting for class to be over. College itself is comparable to a full-time job and it can be overwhelming. Sometimes I wanted to give up. But one thing I managed to learn along my educational journey is that persistence is key. Yes, it is literally the key to feeling successful and becoming a success. How often do you feel at a standstill or puzzled about whether you’re taking the right path in choosing the right career? Well, it happened to me countless times during every semester, especially when I began the Vision Care Technology (VCT) program at my community college. I’ve always been undecided. Therefore, the thought of choosing a career caused absolute mayhem in my mind. What if I choose the wrong one? Before I began the VCT program, I did make the wrong decision. When this happened, not only did I lack motivation, I lost interest in finding myself and so I took a year off from school to re-evaluate my next step. I kept asking myself, “How will I know what my passion is?” I didn’t have a back-up plan to offset the chances that my initial plan would go unfavorably.
After a year, I realized how much I depended on school to keep my life in a healthy routine, and so I decided to just go for it: I applied for the VCT program. I didn’t dare ask myself any profound questions about my rightful passion, I went for it and I was all in. I decided that I wanted to take action and start something and follow through to the very end. Of course, there were moments when people concluded that my behavior was irrational for throwing myself into a field I’d never been exposed to. But that was the point of not asking those deep questions and a theory I wanted to explore for myself. It reminded me of how I needed to be persistent, determined and challenged in life and how these skills would blossom throughout the program. Whenever I needed a reminder why I shouldn’t give up, I would look up inspirational quotes and read. But I never fully comprehended any of the quotes until I finished the program. Self-discovery began for me at that very moment when I realized I had my key all along; I was in control. In addition to gaining patience with myself (which I am still doing every time I work), I slowly began to enjoy applying my education and connecting the dots. As it turns out, becoming a future optician seems to be a promising career filled with opportunities I would have missed if I’d never finished the program. I would have never known the potential or knowledge I had within.
Sometimes all you need is a new per-spec-tive. I hope my example helps any student with uncertainty and doubts to strive to hang on and keep going to the end.
