Recently I watched a lot of people post on Instagram and Facebook about their graduations. Should be exciting and happy right? & 2021 was supposed to be my graduation year from Wofford College. As I am writing this I am a Piedmont Technical College graduate and am currently employed as the Marketing Coordinator for Discover Greenwood. But I am not a Wofford College grad.
I left school and returned to Greenwood, SC (my hometown) after my sophomore year. At that point I had failed three classes and performed poorly in all the others.
College Leeann and high school Leeann are two different people. High school Leeann made all As (except for one C in Mr. Kinard’s physics class, which I should’ve tried harder in but that’s not the point), played two sports, was in many clubs, had an active social life and was involved in church. College Leeann was taking classes that she was interested in, worked 15 hours a week and was in a sorority and was drowning.
I could give you one hundred reasons things didn’t go well: my dad was getting remarried, I wasn’t prioritizing my time, my high school boyfriend and I broke up, I started going out instead of studying, the list goes on and on.
But truthfully I lost myself.
College right out of high school is not for everyone. READ THAT AGAIN. If I had a do over I think I would have gone to PTC and worked then gotten my bachelors degree. Thank the precious Lord above we don’t get do overs though.
Dropping out of school was hard and at the time I thought it was going to mean I was the biggest failure. Let me tell you I cried and cried and cried and then things changed. During the summer I began therapy, I started training for a half marathon and I found out I love to bake. Yes it was hard watching friends go back to school. Yes I felt like I wasn’t doing anything. Yes people judged the heck out of me when I told them I wasn’t going back to Wofford.
When I was honest about not returning, about not being ready, other people my age and full grown adults told me how they look back and wished they had done something different. I am by no means saying I am upset about my past and how my present is. I am saying that your path doesn’t have to be what everybody else’s path is.
Which is what I tell people all the time. You don’t have to or need to do what everyone else is doing. In fact please don’t, the world would be so boring if we all did the same thing.
Find out who you are, what you want and then go and do it. Do it the way that is healthiest for you. Don’t be selfish. Do it with passionate and love and be ambitious.
Writing this blog has been one of those things. It is in all honesty a way to get all these words out of my head and into the universe. I will be happy if people read it and like it. I’ll also be happy if the opposite happens.
Bob Goff’s Dream Big has been a big inspiration for this post. If you haven’t read it please do.
& people go do whatever your dream “it” is
Thoughts from a Twenty Something 