I have wanted to be a teacher for most of my life and I love music. I went to college to be a music teacher. The Music Ed program was almost like two degrees in one: classical music training and education. It required a lot of class hours, a lot of rehearsal time, a lot of clinical time in schools, and a lot of performance time. It wasn’t uncommon for this degree to take 5/5.5 years to complete. Because of high school AP classes and determination, my advisor and I had a plan for me to finish in 4 years. I would be taking 18+ hours each semester (for those of you that don’t know, or don’t remember, that’s a heavy load) but I was ready to finish school and get on with my career.

All that to say, I was CRUSHED when I realized I was going to derail my plan by taking a semester off to get testing. But there wasn’t another good option. I was hoping to be an elementary music teacher. I couldn’t exactly pop in and expect Kindergarteners to handle the classroom if I had a seizure. I needed to figure out why I was having them. I knew that. But it still sucked.

Of course, after I took the semester off, I didn’t want to go back. I hadn’t gotten the seizures under control, I no longer wanted to be a teacher, I didn’t see a point. My dad and Jared kept encouraging me to just finish. I could switch to BA in Music and finish the main degree classes in a semester and spend one extra semester getting a minor. “It would be worth it,” they told me. I wasn’t so sure. But I went ahead and did it. I graduated with a BA in Music and minor in Disability Studies (I may or may not be the one and only person to graduate from MSU with that minor). Graduating meant nothing to me. I didn’t walk. I didn’t have a party. My degree wasn’t really worth anything. I had no idea what I was going to do.