10 years ago, I was 15 years old and a sophomore at a public high school. I was by all means academic, extracurricular-ly involved, and straight up obsessed with The Lord of the Rings. I was driven by good grades, passionate about destroying the One Ring, and oversaturated by formulas and Spanish vocabulary and inspirational quotes from Middle Earth. I was also fiercely up-to-date on all of the celebrity news from couples alerts to Oscar nominations. I could forego college and be happy working my way up from a gossip blog. I was on fuego. At any rate, if students and teachers could nominate who would be the most successful in the future, I would be up there. I wouldn't be first, but I would have been somewhere on that list.
Getting into college didn't seem so hard. I had the grades, the high GPA, the community service hours, some semblance of leadership: what more could they want from me? The snag in my transition out of high school is that I didn't know anything about college except that I needed to get into one. I had only really heard of 5 colleges: Harvard, Pepperdine, UCLA, USC, and the community college down the hill. Without much thought, I applied to UCLA and one other LA-area liberal arts college that my dad recommended. I told him I didn't want to go to dental school. He bopped me over the head with a stack of papers and told me to apply. I started the application to USC, but I was so burned out from exams and the other two applications that I didn't bother to finish it. To my surprise and disappointment, I didn't get into UCLA, but I got into that weird not-dental school, so I guess I was going there. Later I learned that both schools are very difficult to get into, and it sort of blows my mind that I only applied to two. Whoopsie. But like I said, I was projected to be very successful.
10 years later, I have my Bachelor of Arts in "Art History and Visual Arts," which is pointedly misleading. I only took two art history classes (3 less than my minor) and got something like a D on my last art history final. And that's supposedly my major? My emphasis was in critical film studies, film & media studies, or media theory ... fancy ways of saying that I watched a lot of old films, read a ton of long-winded essays, and wrote extensively to tie together media, intention, and speculation. The only major more whimsical was Philosophy. Deep down, I was griping for a major in -- or even distantly related to -- Communications, Public Relations, or Marketing/Advertising and this major couldn't be further from the mark. What did Guy Debord have to do with being a celebrity news guru? My new mantra became, "Future Kristine is smart. She'll figure it out."
