This is a good one.
Once upon a time (last week) a girl set out to defy expectations and to rise to devote herself to several years of arduous tasks. She climbed to the top of an old, crumbling tower (Krieger Hall) and spoke with the wise wizard (Dr. Brown) to ask for advice on how she should proceed. Her quest, dear reader, was to declare a math major.
Now you must understand that this girl was not a warrior of sciences, a knight of engineering or a ruler of technology. No, she was but a lady of words, a Writing Seminars major.
Most others she knew believed her to be crazy. How could she, a writer, pursue a quest so unrelated and daunting as a math major? She was not phased, but she knew she needed help. Sure, she had dabbled in math and was collecting enough numbers to assemble a minor, but the transition to a larger goal seemed like a Herculean task.
She needed the wizard. And he was more than happy to help her. He was ecstatic to discover her other specialty, for the last to complete a quest for both math and any field in the humanities had left this land some two years ago. So he conjured for her the tools with which to begin her quest and she embarked onward into the land of Hopkins.
It was there amongst the towers of textbooks and swarms of problem sets that she finally felt at peace. She had come to this land because it was filled with opportunity, the land of milk and honey — or the land of caffeine and learning, so to speak. Now she could ride gallantly into the sunset clutching the sword of calculus while wearing the helmet of Vonnegut.
Who knows where she’ll end up. It could be another kingdom, where she will devote herself to another quest. It could be worlds away, where she’ll take on the unthinkable: a real job. Or maybe she’ll wander around for a while under the good graces of her parents until she decides where her talents would be put to best use.
This brave girl, dear readers, is none other than myself. I know, I know, shocking. You didn’t see that one coming. That was a plot twist of epic proportions, a turn that was surprising to the nth degree. But what comes next? Do I just ride swiftly into the sunset, prepared to complete my quest? Or will I face obstacles, villains and everything else built into the hero’s journey?
We can figure that out together, because we all know this won’t be my last piece of self-indulgence thinly veiled in an extended metaphor. Stay tuned as I fight the dragons of Advanced Algebra 1 and the wicked witches of Intermediate Poetry.
Cool, now allow me to hit you over the head with the theme. Every good fairy tale’s got to have an extraordinarily obvious theme, right? Most of them are true love. If that’s the case here, I guess the theme is to indulge yourself when you love more than one thing. Math and Writing Seminars — does that mean I’m promoting polygamy? To each his own...
But that’s not the moral of this story. It’s a story of self-empowerment. You can do whatever you want. No one out there can tell you not to pursue something you love, even if you’re on the track to head somewhere completely different.
After all, that’s part of the reason we all came to Hopkins. There’s freedom in this land.
