Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Just a bit of venting

This is not gaming related.

For those of you who do not know, I am currently in school as a Computer Animation major. I am about four months into my course, and I have been second-guessing myself since I applied for the course.

I had initially been going to attend a college about two hours away from my home, which would have required me to stay in a dorm, as I cannot drive due to severe anxiety. Needless to say, that did not work out, and I am instead taking online Computer Animation classes through a different university.

I ended up taking an accidental "gap year" between my high school graduation and going to college, which involved a lot of soul searching. I had about two jobs in that time: one as an office assistant in a medical facility (basically, I did the paper shredding), and I also worked at a local concession stand for a short time. I ended up taking a break from a few prominent hobbies of mine, such as Cosplay and historical reenactment.

I am a person who cannot figure out what they want to pursue. In high school, I had been planning to attend school to become an Esthetician, but that interest soon faded and I have no desire to do that whatsoever.
I have a rather large, futile interest in historical reenactment that I won't pursue career-wise. Having that as a career goal is not realistic, and there is no way I am getting a history degree (my brother has a history degree that has yet to help him at all).
Any personality-career test I take comes up with Anthropology, which would undoubtedly be a good fit for me, but everywhere I read says that Anthropology is a terrible major to get into, and you will not be likely to find a job as an Anthropologist or Archaeologist.
Those same tests say that I would be an excellent Museum Curator or an Archivist, but again, where in the world do you get a job like that?

Another interest of mine is Computer Animation. The issue I have here is that I do not particularly enjoy drawing, and I do not consider myself a very creative person. I'm pretty sure that I'll enjoy the more technological aspects of the field, but I worry that the creativity required will be too much for me to handle. I'm taking an art class in my spare time, and they ask me to draw an object on the table. Then they ask me if I "drew the object as I see it, or if I drew my interpretation of it." I don't know what to answer there. I am drawing it as I see it, but it doesn't end up looking like the object in front of me because I do not have the creative skills to render it as I see it.

Finally, the last interest is the one that is currently bothering me the most. I appear to have some random interest in Physics, less of an interest and more of a hunch. Usually interests like this fade rather quickly, like the Esthetician one, but this one has persisted. And the issue is that I do not think I have any way of knowing if this is something I would be good at. I have always been terrible at math, more by virtue of not being taught well rather than my own bad math skills (when I do understand it, I really understand it). My high school offered practically no science classes aside from biology. They were going to offer a physics class, but only three of us signed up for it, so they cancelled it. The same thing happened for a meteorology class I was interested in.
I've tried visiting a local science museum to see what catches my interest, but it was too filled with screaming children playing with the physics stuff for me to pursue any interest in it at all.

And what is bothering me is that while I am pursuing Computer Animation, there is something nagging me in the back of my mind that I should be learning more about physics. Everything that I've read into quantum and theoretical physics is fascinating to me, and my brain wants to understand it. Yet I do not know if I will ever get to the point where my math skills will be up to par in order to pursue my interests.

I just do not know what to do. Whenever Physics pop into my head I question my decision to learn Computer Animation. Every single time. One of the reasons why Computer Animation is an interest is because of an interest in how things move (which, of course, involves physics).

I have no idea how to tell if Physics is really for me, or if my brain is just fantasizing. I need to know because otherwise I'll keep second-guessing myself, but I don't know how to know. I read things that say that if you have interest in science, to pursue it because the world always needs more scientists, but I also read the opposite, and that it's difficult and not realistic to jump right into it.

So, basically, I have no idea what I'm doing.

tl;dr
I'm stuck between staying in my Computer Animation courses or pursuing a mysterious persisting interest in Physics and I don't know what to do about it.

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