The Girl Who Cried Plans.

I bought this magnet on a whim from Barnes & Noble about 3 years ago. It was sitting on the little rack of bookmarks and magnets and other doo-dahs with quaint little sayings and quotes on them. To be honest, I really just loved the typography, the design, and the way it reminded me of my mother, so I tossed it in with my other purchases (probably a C.S. Lewis book or another new journal).

It’s been on my family’s yellowing 1970′s refrigerator ever since, and my mother indeed took quite a liking to it, reminding me of it often. But for me, it never bore much personal resonance… until recently.

This past year has been critical for me as far as finding direction for my passion. My whole life I have been a sort of wild fusion of drive, chaos, and curiosity. I want to experience everything, see everything, and change everything around me for the better- but for a very, very long time, I wasn’t sure how to do it. Then, things slowly started creeping into place. A summer as a photography intern in Nepal, a year at IUSB feeling isolated and disconnected, a great youth group and a family get-together, and here I am. And Internet, I’m scared.

I’ve made many mistakes in the past, from not doing homework in high school to not following through on going to Africa for 6 months; I’ve had many plans that simply have not materialized. I’ve tried to listen to what God wants for my life, but I think I often miss the mark. It makes me worry: what if I fail yet again, or choose to go a different direction again? I don’t want to be the little girl who cried plans, but I feel like there must be others who know this feeling- this tumultuous exhilaration and nervous concern… (and if you do, let me know in the comments! I’ll keep you in my prayers!)

I am one of those people who usually hopes to a fault, but this one thing is so paramount to the direction of my future that I hardly want to speak of the possibility for fear of snuffing it out. It has come at the end of a long, confusion process of discerning where I should transfer to in the fall. First, I cried ‘IU Bloomington!’ because I thought it was my only option. Then, I cried ‘Steubenville!’ since I had long wanted to go there. But after making my 6th visit to the latter campus, I realized that neither school offers what I so desperately desire: an academic setting close to home that is committed to excellence and built on the foundations of the Catholic faith. After a lot of inner turmoil trying to decide between spirituality and academic quality, an answer hit me like a brick wall at 70 mph.

I’m not their ideal candidate- my GPA is a 3.5, not a 3.7, I didn’t have stellar SAT scores and my parents weren’t alumni (in fact, they never went to college). But I think that’s the very reason that I need to be there. The school has plenty of cutouts: girls in short skirts and Uggs who just want to party, folks just in it for the prestigious degree, people who are there because it’s free for them. But I, I want to be there in order to be throttled forward. I want the challenge, the community, the aesthetic. Like my favorite old Apple commercial says:

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the rou  nd pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

So tonight, I did one thing that scared me. I started my application to the University of Notre Dame. Because anything that scares me this much is probably something I should be doing.