<p>No one but me thinks…?
Uh, that the orig post is a wagon load?</p>
<p>I’ve given up…^^^</p>
<p>This is a ■■■■■.</p>
<p>I truly understand. I received my Assoc. degree in nursing when I was 23. I did this because it was a 2 year degree, I was living in poverty with my husband and daughters and I needed a good job. While I like science and was good at it, I was better at language and writing and originally was enrolled to be an English major. My mom pushed me very had to go into nursing - so I did.</p>
<p>I regret it. I am 37 years old, a nurse and beginning to resent it so much I actually wish terrible things would happen so I could quit. Yes, that sounds pathological and it proobably is, but it is such exhausting work in such a high stress environment that I am so tired of doing. I am trying to write but that is hard too because other than poetry, it has been so long and I am quite rustsy. I should have majored in English, maybe taught at the high school level and spent my time writing.</p>
<p>Of course it is easy to say this now when I have come to have a severe disdain for all aspects of nursing but that is what I should have done. And I didn’t and I regret it.</p>
<p>My daughter has considered nursing for the same reasons I did. She is good at biology and knows she will have a well paying job. But, she loves traveling and learning about different cultures which is why she wants to major in International studies, linguistics and minor in a foreign language. I encourage her to do this because this is where her dreams are.</p>
<p>I believe to be great requires risk. There are risks associated with my daughter’s major related to acquiring a job but if that is what she loves then I want her to do it. I do not want her to have the regrets that I do. I had a friend in nursing school who was an artist and we would often discuss our love of art and writing. She said one day, in the hallway outside our microbiology lab that, “You can’t live on your art.” I took that very seriously and I should have thrown that comment away.</p>
<p>Whatever you decide you must live with it. Luckily you are young and if you do start out in engineering and hate it - just change. And vice versa. Good luck to you.</p>
<p>oh well, if this is a ■■■■■ maybe someone else will read it and it will help them.</p>
<p>■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■… the OP was hilarious though.</p>
<p>Honestly, I only skimmed through your post because your writing style is kinda grating. You really need to cut the tortured metaphors and rein in your use of adjectives. And the melodramatic self-pity is a little too much too.</p>
<p>That being said, what I got out of your rant is that you read Ender’s Shadow as a kid, which is weird as people usually read Ender’s Game first, and that you applied to a bunch of reach schools + NCSU. That was your first mistake. Yale and Princeton, seriously? That was never going to happen with a 3.1 UW GPA, even with legacy. NYU, UNC and Reed were also unrealistic reaches for you.</p>
<p>You should have applied more wisely. That being said, what’s done is done. You can either find some reasons to feel more positively about your college choice or take a gap year and reapply to some schools you actually like, because right now you’re in no position to live up to your own expectations in college, imo.</p>
<p>Agree that OP should pursue theater. I needed a 20 minute intermission in the middle of reading the first post :)</p>
<p>I hate to pile on, but was I the only one who heard the ghostly voice of William Strunk while reading the OP’s entry?</p>
<p>Strunk’s advice to writers: “Omit needless words.”</p>
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</p>
<p>Bravo! Good one jym!</p>
<p><<<<< taking a bow and curtsey>>>>>> :)</p>
<p>Deadline has passed for 2012, but perhaps you can achieve greatness by winning a well-known writing contest?</p>
<p>[The</a> Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest](<a href=“http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/]The”>http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/)</p>
<p>Eh, I wasn’t trolling. I do understand that really, being that good man that I spoke about matters so much in life, more than probably anything else. I still can’t help but feeling down, that that is all my life will be. Those are the things that I know my life probably will be because those are the things that I do deeply care about. </p>
<p>Now, about the naval gazing and not searching for greatness, that it just comes along with the ride, well does it? For example, if I, like mspearl, majored in nursing because I loved it, and I loved helping people, but still, I think I would be much less probable to be “great,” then say going into something like Engineers Without Borders, or accumulating money/knowledge, so I could really have a positive impact on society.</p>
<p>I read most of the Ender’s books when I was younger, but Ender’s Shadow in particular affected me. </p>
<p>About my expectations of college, I mean I received fantastic grades senior year and applied myself, so yup. </p>
<p>And my post being a “load,” well some parts are talked up, but the delusions of grandeur, of maybe, I don’t know, one day giving a speech that really affected people, more so than I could ever have done by being just a good person, are very real. I don’t know.</p>
<p>What a great contest! A single sentence of up to 50-60 words!! Contest essentially for the world’s longest run-on sentence! Love it!</p>
<p>We used to have a saying around where I grew up “intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity”. Writing major? Only if you’re willing to become a lot more straightforward.</p>
<p>But, I never assume anybody is a ■■■■■, so . . . OP, in my kindest mom voice, I say you sound like a whole lot of other kids standing at the edge of adulthood. The drama and the angst go away as you age, and you will redefine greatness. Go to school. See what’s there. You do not need to have your whole future wrapped up now. Let go of the notion that you do.</p>
<p>As well as politicians who studied engineering (and add New York City’s mayor Bloomberg to the list) there are some great science writers - there’s definitely room for someone to wax poetic about engineering.</p>
<p>Overthinking has slain many a warrior, Grasshopper.
You either do. Or you think about doing.</p>
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</p>
<p>But what you’re not getting is that “greatness” can be done in small, subtle ways. Let’s take a nurse - she might not be developing the cure for cancer (or insert other grand ways that land one in the history books). But she made the people under her care feel better. Why isn’t that great? Why isn’t that enough? Life isn’t just grand gestures - it’s the small, everyday gestures. I am profoundly grateful to a dear friend - who is absolutely brilliant intellectually - who has just given me courage to make some changes in my life and helps me believe in myself. That’s his greatness. What’s wrong or not-admirable about that?</p>
<p>Not to mention Thomas Pynchon. I hate to send you to read something that doesn’t lack for big words and angst over whether you are part of the elect, but Gravity’s Rainbow is a major and (I think) enduring work of literature that could only have been written by someone who had studied a lot of physics and engineering.</p>
<p>Some other artistic engineers: Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra, Alexander Calder, Hedy Lamarr, Herbie Hancock, Iannis Xenakis.</p>
<p>Then, of course, there’s Yasser Arafat, Boris Yeltsin, and Hu Jintao.</p>
<p>Scout59, apologies to William Strunk. I mentioned E.B.White but was thinking of Strunk and White. To the original poster: pick a copy of this book up!</p>
<p>I wonder, if these posts are for real, whether there is a mental health problem going on. This kind of obsession with greatness (and paddy you mention “delusions of grandeur” yourself) can be part of bipolar disorder. The feelings of inadequacy before these delusions might also point to depression.</p>
<p>I seriously suggest some counseling for this young person before the transition to college.</p>
<p>(I did write those lines: being ordinary is a happy specialty of mine)</p>
<p>How do you get to the top of the mountain? One step at a time.</p>
<p>Sure you could take a helicopter, but then you’d miss out on the climb.</p>