Kendall N.
Photograph provided by Kendall N.
If you’re reading this, life isn’t going to go as planned, and that’s okay.
The person I was and how I saw my next few years playing out as a new freshman at Georgia tech and who I am today as a junior are entirely different. I live a different life than I did my first few months of freshman year, some parts by choice, others not, but I’ve come to realize that both are okay. Actually, it is more than okay, it is great, but it took me awhile to feel that way.
I started off my freshman year with a plan. I was running cross country and track for Tech, studying biology, dreaming of being a doctor, never imagining I’d miss home all that much, but not really excited to be at a school so close to home. What I didn’t know in August of 2017 was that my life would not look like it did for long.
By November, I began to feel the pressure of running a little (okay a lot) too much, I hated my classes, and I had only a friend or two when I got a call that my dad was in surgery to remove a blood clot from his brain. After his stroke my dad spent a month in inpatient rehab at the Shepherd Center 3 miles from Tech’s campus (take this as you will but I took it as a God wink that I was at exactly the right school.)
Life wasn’t the same after that. My dad, although physically present, is not the same mentally as the person that raised me. I’ve learned to grieve a person that is still here and learned to look at life a little differently. I quit the team at the end of my freshman year. I changed majors. I looked beyond exactly where I was and began to fix relationships that had been broken for way longer than I’d like to admit.
So yes, things changed and pretty much nothing went as planned. It wasn’t easy. It still isn’t easy. But change can lead to so many wonderful things. I now speak to my brother after 5 years of silence. I have found a subject that I am passionate about. I know the people around me that I can call on for just about anything, and I learned to take life just a little less seriously.
You don’t have to have it all together. If you change your mind that is okay, it might even be best. So, if you’re reading this, I hope you know that things aren’t going to go as planned, and that is okay.
Kendall N., Georgia Tech
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