By the end of high school, most people know themselves intuitively. However, trusting your gut feeling about the future can be challenging, especially when others around you are offering unsolicited advice about what you should do with your life.
Those well-meaning ideas come from a variety of individuals, the most obvious being parents, siblings, other relatives, and school counselors, to name a few. They all have one thing in common: your best interest at heart.
Those suggestions for your future are all very kind and thoughtful, but they are not your hopes or dreams. And certainly not your gut feelings. Going against those intuitive gut feelings sometimes creates unnecessary internal conflicts and roadblocks in your life.
Unfortunately, I went down that road.
While struggling through my first year of community college, my gut feelings kept screaming at me. My plan all along was to enlist in the Army, travel as much as possible during those service years, then resume college after my military commitment using the GI Bill. To me, that was a plan, and one I believed in.
However, my choice to join the Army went against the strong suggestions from my career counselor in high school. He assured me that if I did not attend college directly after high school, I would never go back and get that degree in journalism that I wanted so much.
Thus, I reluctantly enrolled in college right after high school. But after two semesters, I knew it was the wrong decision. I kept reflecting on my plans and what I wanted in life. So, I dropped out of college and joined the Army. That decision wasn’t so much because I loved the thought of Army life; I had nothing to compare it to. Rather, it was my choice, and my soon-to-be military experiences that made the decision easy.
While based at U.S. Garrison Neu Ulm at Wiley Kaserne on the banks of the Danube River, my experiences in Europe went far beyond a couple of weekend passes. During my tour, and living in West Germany, I visited a dozen countries, went to the Winter Olympics in Austria, met the pope during the Holy Year in Rome, attended a couple of Munich Oktoberfests, flew in a small plane over the tulip fields in Holland, and visited exciting European cities like London, Amsterdam, Paris, Zurich and Vatican City.
I also explored the countries of Liechtenstein and Monaco, Portugal, Spain, France, England, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and all throughout West Germany.
If I had never joined the Army, none of these unforgettable experiences would have been possible.
When I officially ended my time in service, I spent four more months traveling Europe before heading home. I was now ready to hit the books.
It took me less than two years to earn my associate of arts degree at the local community college, and a few years later, I graduated from Washington State University with a degree in journalism.
Before settling down into a full-time reporter position, there was one more itch that needed to be scratched. My time in Germany had left me with a huge case of wanderlust, and that led me to volunteer as an English instructor in Central Africa with the U.S. Peace Corps.
While I had officially graduated from Washington State, I wasn’t able to attend the graduation since I was catching a flight the night before the ceremony. While flying to Africa, I reflected on my life choices and how they led me to that point. I knew that I had taken a wrong turn when initially attending college, but it didn’t take me long to figure out my mistake, and smooth sailing has prevailed ever since.
If there is a message to be learned, it is to always listen to your heart and trust your gut feelings; they are rarely wrong.
