Okay, so at the beginning of the Fall term, I decided to change my major. Yes, again. I went from being a TESOL major to being an Applied Linguistics major. All I had to do, really, was cut the teaching portion out of the TESOL degree, and I was left with linguistics. I like the way it sounds to say I have (or will have, whatever) a degree in Linguistics. Impressive. A little cryptic. Until whoever I'm talking to asks me to be more specific. "Linguistics?" they say. "What does that mean, exactly?" Well, polite coworker in the elevator, it means grammar. Yeah. I have a degree in grammar, and I know a lot about how people learn languages. Less impressive.

The thing is, I actually couldn't be happier with my decision to drop the teaching portion of my degree. I listen to some of my friends who are going to be teachers talking about their student teaching experiences, or about how excited they are to be in the classroom, and all I can think about while I'm smiling and nodding along to the conversation is God, I'm so glad that isn't me. Seriously. I don't know what I was thinking when I thought teaching was a good idea. Well, I do, actually. Travel. I was thinking that teaching, especially teaching ESL, would be a great career path for me because it afforded a ton of opportunity for travel. I could teach literally anywhere in the world for however long I wanted and then move on. Plus I have summers off. What could be better? The longer I was in the program, however, the more clearly I understood this wasn't the career for me.

BUT, now I have no direction. I know I don't like my current job enough to stay there for very long, but where do I even start looking for jobs? What do I even want to do?I thought about taking that Foreign Service Officers Test, but I don't know. It sounds cool, but it also sounds really strict. Plus I have to choose a career path, and that's the path I have to stay on the entire time I'm in the State Department. I'm feeling a little claustrophobic just thinking about it. Someone made a joke about me joining the FBI, which surprised me a little, because I hadn't told anyone about that. The truth is, I was actually considering it, and I had looked into it already. You have to be 23 to apply. And the application process take forever. And I don't know if I could shoot a gun at a person, if it came to it. Maybe at a non-kill zone. But I would definitely want to be an agent, not an office peon. But also, it is pretty hard to get in, I think, so my chances probably aren't that good.

I'm reading this book right now about how to make long term travel work. The idea sounds really cool and doable. Inexpensive, even. The writer suggest working some entry level jobs for a few months and then hitting the road for a few. The whole time I read it, I'm planning a vague summer long road trip across America but I know I'm too chicken to go it alone or even explain to my parent what I want to do.

Maybe I'm destined to be directionless.