This is Your Moment

With our newsfeeds utterly saturated with articles about COVID-19, I figured that for my last Her Campus article, I’d share the story of why I decided to join the team as a writer and editor. Around this time last year, I remember aimlessly scrolling through instagram stories when one in particular had caught my eye. It was a story promoting the Queen’s chapter of Her Campus advertising that they were currently hiring for their 2019/2020 team. At first I thought to myself: oh, that’s cool, I wonder what kind of content they post! So, as one does when one should be studying for exams, I got on my phone and did the opposite. After a bit of searching, I got myself onto the Her Campus Queen’s U website and started scrolling through the articles, eventually choosing to read One Wild and Precious Life by Julia Sun. It sounded like just what I needed in that moment—in the days leading up, I had been tossing and turning about whether or not I had made the right decision by going to university and choosing a minor in physical geography. I felt dispassionate and directionless. 

Part of me wondered if I perhaps should have chosen Con-Ed, or if I should have forgone university altogether for culinary school instead. It had been a difficult year, my grades were nowhere near where I wanted them, and I wasn’t feeling confident in my academic abilities. As a result, I was questioning if I was in the right field of study. Had I made a mistake? Was I wasting money by being here? Was I wasting my one wild and precious life? This was mostly due to my back injury, which had taken me out of school for almost half of the fall semester—it had knocked me completely off course and when I had come back to school, I just couldn’t seem to get into the rhythm of doing readings and going to classes. I was still adjusting to the different ways I had to move and to changing how I did things like grocery shopping since I couldn’t carry more than 15lbs at a time and couldn’t sit or sleep in certain positions. By the second semester, I had pretty much figured it out and was almost back to normal, but I still didn’t feel settled in terms of school. Everyone I knew was able to pick up a routine like it was no big deal, but since I hadn’t really had one in the previous semester, I was starting from square one.

So there I was, sitting at the kitchen table, reading Julia Sun’s article and feeling down in the dumps because I felt like my life was spinning out of control. And then I read this: “Everything is bound to change, the ship is bound to be steered off course for a little bit, and not everything will go the way you had maybe intended it to be.”

On its own, this sentence is a bit daunting. (Oh no! All my plans are for naught? What’s the point then?! Why am I even bothering?) With the rest of the article however, I felt like at the end of the sentence, I could take a deep breath and add “and that’s okay”. Part of why I felt like I might have chosen the wrong minor was that I didn’t feel passionate about what I was learning; I had been hesitant to change my minor though because I was about to go into third year and well, it had been my plan since grade 11 to minor in physical geography! After reading all of Julia Sun’s article, I felt confident enough to change my minor to Indigenous Studies—and I am so glad that I did—and more than that, I felt boosted enough to apply for a writer and editor position at Her Campus Queen’s U. The way I saw it was, if I could write articles that helped even just one person feel inspired to make a change in their life that they’ve needed to make, or to go out and apply for a job, or start a new book, then I would know I had done a good thing and I would know that my time at Queen’s hadn’t been a waste of time.

What followed next was a year of change—despite how it has ended, I can honestly say that third year has been substantially better than first and second. It wasn’t easy and there were certainly ups and downs, but with hard work and by constantly pushing myself out of my comfort zone, I’m ending the year having accomplished far more than I would have previously thought I could. In this year, I became a part of a team of truly magnificent young individuals through Her Campus, I stepped up my food-stagram game and started making some waves, I became friends with some incredible people, I had the guts to apply to volunteer with Lost Paws (and got it!) , I wrote some articles that I am really proud of, and I had the drive to go out and get a job that I love. So, if you’re reading this right now and you’re doubting your academic choices or feeling just overall down in the dumps—which is completely reasonable, especially given current circumstances—this is my promise to you that you do have the capacity to flip the script and make substantial changes. If you’ve been looking for a sign to make a positive change in your life—whether it be changing your program or trying a new hairstyle—this is it. 

This is your moment.

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