I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately

It turns out the hipsters were right.

It comes to no surprise to anyone that knows me personally that I am very undecided about my plans for a college major. Even though I am only ending my first year of college I'm too the point where I need to make some decisions about what I'm doing. I was complaining about it to some art majors on my floor, aka people who are following their dreams, and one of them told me to go take a walk.

This isn't the first time someone's told me this. The last time someone told me to take a walk they told me to smoke a cigarette too, but I left out that part. I only planned to be out for ten to twenty minutes but that soon turned into an hour and twenty minutes and I actually learned a lot.

I started out walking the prettiest part of campus:

I didn't stay on campus very long though. I started out wandering towards buildings that looked interesting, which almost landed me in a very sketchy place, but there was one building in particular I kept ending up in front of.

The building pictured below is where I kept ending up. 

The building is an abandoned high school that should be reopening to a charter school in the next year or two. I sat outside of this building for at least a half hour. For some reason I thought this was a very profound moment, mostly because I went on the walk to decide whether or not I wanted to be a teacher and I kept ending up back at this old high school.

Education has always been that career choice I've gone back to. I've wanted to be just about anything under the sun, but the one thing I've never been able to shake is education. Something about sitting in front of this old school made me feel more okay about things, it was like a moment where I felt like even though things are bad now it all somehow be okay.

Part of this was a quote that was carved into the top of that is carved onto the top of the building:

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us dare to do our duty as we understand it. -Abraham Lincoln

I don't know what it was, but something about this quote and that building made me feel okay. I may still not know what type of teacher I want to be, or if that's even what  I will be. But what I do feel is a greater sense of clarity, and for now that has to be enough.

-Tate