Everyone Has Their Own Path

Ladies,

For those of you who don’t know, I am currently a freshman at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. Coming from a family filled with engineers, I felt obligated to follow their path and going into the fall semester, I was ecstatic to finally start the journey. As a FIRST alumni, it was seemed like an obvious field to enter, and as a girl I would have access to lots of opportunities. However, I quickly realized I was terrible at physics, and not only that, I hated it! I didn’t know why I was struggling so much because I had spent the past three years of my life building robots and getting told how I would be a phenomenal engineer. Despite these setbacks, I was determined to succeed. As the semester progressed, it became evident that I was really struggling and no matter how much time I put into studying, I still wasn’t succeeding.

A professor told me one day that everyone has their own unique path and despite having a list of classes I need to take, in the end I would be modifying it anyways. For some reason that really clicked with me and I began to look into design classes. I knew instantly that it was where I belonged but felt bad for leaving the engineering world behind. After taking some design classes I realized that I could still incorporate technology if I wanted to, and that it was so much fun.

I’m sharing this little story about how I realized I should become a graphic designer instead of an engineer not because I think people should be one or another, but rather to find real passion. Even if you are a FIRST student, that shouldn’t be the reason you do something, it should be because you truly love it.

This blog was written by Claudia Dube.