2. I ignored the signs that I’m changing
You might say: it seems like I knew all this early enough: If I want my knowledge to be accepted and hired I need to complete my studies, collect as many activities and papers in my cv as I possibly can and everything will be fine. Why do you complain, Vanessza? This was no surprise to you, we all grow up knowing this thing. This is true. But we don’t know if we will change, we don’t know when and how many times. I always envied my classmates who knew that they wanted to be doctors already at the age of 14. I had no idea about my career choice and I involuntarily chose to turn a blind eye to my honest interests. Funny, because now as I look back it’s so clear that I was only truly interested in artistic things. But schools and parents in Romania are not the ones to encourage you in that field. I can’t blame them.I started sewing
I stopped caring about my grades at university and decided to spend my time with other things: learning about sewing, fashion design, photography and graphic design. I put away my determination of meeting the expectations (at this time for me these were: attend every class at university, complete your projects as fast and as well as you can, reach the highest possible grades at tests, be part of a research group, spend your time in a laboratory by doing research and experiments). Once I gave up my clinging to my previous plans and I accepted that my desires changed I started to feel a new, previously unknown relief and happiness: I was finally pleased with the things I created, I stopped questioning if this is the right thing to do or not. When I couldn’t do something perfectly well (If my skirt turned out wrong or my pictures were not how I imagined) I couldn’t wait to learn more about the topic and improve myself. I never felt this way with any chemistry exercise, and I honestly didn’t believe that I could ever feel the excitement of learning ever again. But when I started drawing, sewing and creating blog posts I found out that learning can be fun if I’m trying to improve myself in something that I actually care about.