The list was like a smack to the face. Sitting pretty at number THREE of the top ten schools was the Johns Hopkins University. I WENT to the Johns Hopkins University for my undergraduate education. Heck, I remember walking past Gilman Hall and looking (condescendingly) at those Writing Seminar majors sitting and smoking on the front steps of the building. They were pale-skinned and dressed in black like vampires wannabes. I don’t know if they were deliberately playing up the not-quite-so-starving artist hype (you’ll have to look at the tuition costs at Hopkins to realize that there’s no room for the “starving” sort of anything as you’ll need a hefty bank account or a heck of a lot of scholarships to be at Hopkins) but they sure looked cool compared to me–the nerdy Biology and Philosophy major. Still, I told myself then, writing wouldn’t pay and my future was going to be ever so much more financially secure when I graduated.
But now, looking back, man, what wouldn’t I have given to be one of those vampire wannabes in front of Gilman Hall (minus the smoking which is bad for your lungs.) I had been interested in writing long before I went to college. I could have been there in the basement of Gilman Hall, learning from illustrious writers, including Chaim Potok, the author of one of my favorite books of all time, The Chosen. I had, in fact, attempted to sign up for Potok’s class, but was summarily dismissed. Writing Seminars majors received prioritized placement in Writing Seminars classes, and with a vaunted guest lecturer like Potok, an outsider like me stood no chance of enrolling in that class.
Looking back, I wonder if I’d taken one of those Writing Seminar classes, would I have realized where my heart really lay? Would I have switched majors? Would I have written more, written sooner, been published sooner? I couldn’t help feeling that Life was looking at me from the pages of the article about the top ten schools for creative writing, pointing a finger, and laughing, “Ha ha, you doofus…”
It’s rather discouraging to be a few months shy of forty and wondering if you’d taken the wrong path in life.
And then, I saw this picture on Facebook that made me chuckle and think that maybe I hadn’t screwed up after all. My choice of majors eventually led me to graduate business school, and my MBA landed me a job with the Boston Consulting Group. Better yet, I met my husband while we were both pursuing our MBAs at the University of Virginia, and I would not have traded HIM for anything, not even status as a New York Times bestselling author. My qualifications and work experiences have provided me with a full-time job I truly enjoy, which pays for all of life’s necessities and a large chunk of non-necessities for myself, my husband, and our three children, AND has given me the time and financial freedom to pursue a second (and concurrent) career as an author.
If I missed out on important writing skills as a non-Writing Seminars major, I have certainly picked them up over the past two years, possibly even more effectively than I might have if I were in college. (I considered myself a fairly conscientious student, but even so, I was only at Chapter 5 of Plato’s Republic when the professor was discussing Chapter 10…) Necessity is the mother of invention, and it is also the mother of learning. In the past two years, I did not just learn about how to write well. I learned how to edit a book. I learned how to publish a book. I learned how to market a book.
So, to Life, all I have to say is, “The only time you can make me feel like a doofus is if I never take the path at all. I’m on that writing path now, and I don’t even feel like I had to take the path less traveled. I managed to find a way to walk both paths at the same time. I’ve been abundantly blessed.”
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