This year has made me realize that growing up isn’t fun and it isn’t easy to do. I sometimes wish I could go back to second grade where my dreams and aspirations were to become a country singer and a pro basketball player.

Things were so simple when I was younger. Everyone always told me I could be anything I wanted to be. In all actuality that’s not true. Not everyone can be a doctor, astronaut or pro athlete.

As I got older I realized that I would have to choose a career that was realistic and that I was good at. In sixth grade I decided I wanted to be a forensic scientist or a marine biologist. I was fascinated with science. By my freshman year of high school I realized that science was not for me. I simply didn’t understand it and decided it was a waste of my time trying to.

It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that I started considering going into journalism. I had seen the movie “Hotel Rwanda” and became extremely interested in what happened and thought how amazing it would be to report or take photos of something like that.

From then on I started taking photos of basically everything. My junior year I attended a journalism workshop here at Eastern and that’s what officially made up my mind about my career.

I finally knew that journalism was the right path and more specifically photojournalism.

Now that I’ve graduated college I thought I had everything figured out. I was wrong. The plan was to graduate and get a job. As of now that plan isn’t working out so well. With the way the job market is it’s extremely difficult finding a job, difficult to the point that I’m considering going back to school and getting another degree. Growing up I didn’t think about the possibility of my plan not working.

Growing up deals with more than just deciding a career. It deals a lot with the people that are in our lives.

In every stage of life people come and go. In high school we have our close group of friends and if we’re lucky we stay friends throughout college.

In college we make friends that turn into more like family because of the fact we are usually far away from our real families.

So when the time comes to leave college and move on to the next stage it’s harder than it was to leave high school.

College is a comfort zone because of the strength of the friendships made. Leaving those friendships is a reality check. The fact that the friends I met freshman year will no longer live five minutes away and that they’ll potentially live over five hours away is sad.

Growing up literally means moving on. When I was younger all I wanted to do was grow up. College has made me realize that growing up isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Nothing ever goes according to plan, so you have to learn to improvise.

One of my new favorite quotes is “Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations,” by Faith Baldwin. I feel that it truly fits life and growing up. Nothing stays the same, everything is constantly changing and we have to learn to deal with it.

Audrey Sawyer is a senior journalism major. She can be reached at 581-7942 or at [email protected].