stepping outside comfort zones

Tonight’s guest post comes from Sara @ My Fancy Tuna. Sara is on a journey to getting a degree in dietetics and consumer foods. Her story is certainly interesting and inspiring — enjoy!

Hello readers of Clean Eating Chelsey! I’m Sara, the writer of My Fancy Tuna, a food blog about my cooking/baking triumphs (and blunders), reviews of restaurants in beautiful Athens, GA, and random stuff about my life as a dietetics and consumer foods student. Choosing to major in dietetics and consumer foods was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made — I love my classes (not counting the science requirements, like chemistry) and I finally feel driven and passionate about school! However, like most college students, it took me a couple of years and a lot of courage to finally make the change to follow my dreams to have a job that revolves around food and nutrition.

I thought I’d share my story for my guest post on Chelsey’s blog — maybe I’ll inspire one of ya’ll in the same way that Kath inspired me…after all, she’s the one that started my journey!

Growing up, I never imagined myself as a dietitian. I had not even heard of the profession until my senior year in high school, when I was looking through UGA’s massive list of majors. I distinctly remember thinking, “Why the heck would anyone want to be something boring like a dietitian?”

Oh, the irony. Funny how life works, right?

Anyways, at that point I was set on becoming a graphic designer for magazines or a book editor. Writing was something I felt comfortable doing, despite the fact that I absolutely hated it. What I really liked was reading and analyzing books, so I figured that some kind of liberal arts major was the path for me. I had always earned good grades in my English classes in high school; writing came more naturally to me than math and science ever did. I was eager to take college literature classics, but I knew that being a literature major wasn’t exactly marketable, so I decided to try magazine journalism as my major and keep literature as a minor.

During my first two years of college, I aced all of my core and literature classes. As I continued making good grades, my confidence grew, but at the same time, I felt a little unsettled. Even though I was making A’s, I didn’t feel like I was learning anything useful, nor was I looking forward to starting my intro journalism classes. Looking through the writing assignments on the syllabi made me anxious and none of the topics seemed interesting. I also couldn’t see myself fitting into the fast paced, competitive journalism world. I didn’t relate to anyone in my Intro to Advertising or Intro to New Media classes and I didn’t feel the same competitive drive that I felt in high school to get involved with journalism clubs or activities. Studying for my classes felt forced and I dreaded going to school.

My parents told me to just take classes I enjoyed and that my job didn’t have to be my life. I decided to try more English classes since I at least enjoyed the discussions and reading assignments, even if I was terrified of writing double digit page papers.

One of my first food blog creations

At the same time all of this was happening, I was also becoming majorly interested in cooking, baking and nutrition. Over Christmas break during my sophomore year, I started my food blog.

I was surprised to find that I loved writing blog entries about food, so I began thinking that maybe I could make a career of it. After all, writing was my comfort zone, even if I didn’t exactly like it. After researching majors in other colleges, I found Consumer Journalism in UGA’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences — I could combine a journalism major with a major in the FCS college, like Foods and Nutrition. The switch made me optimistic and even a little excited about my future. I began taking the required intro classes for my new major, like Intro to Child and Family Development, Intro to Consumer Economics and Intro to Nutrition. The first two classes did not interest me in the slightest, but the Nutrition class was the most enjoyable class (outside of my English classes) I had taken up to that point! I couldn’t believe that I found nutrition, a science-based class, interesting!

It was around that time that I also found Kath’s blog (KERF, as most of you probably know) and read about her journey to become a dietitian. I was in awe of her drive and captivated by the descriptions of her internship and the classes she was taking. It was around that time that I started picturing myself taking those classes to eventually become an RD, but when I looked at the science requirements for the major (Organic Chemistry, Bio Chemistry, Microbiology, etc.), I choked. Taking those science classes would mean stepping out of my comfort zone — I knew I could do all right in any writing class I took, but I had no idea what to expect from myself with science classes.

In the end, I decided to stay with Consumer Journalism, which meant that I could take the food classes that didn’t have science prerequisites, and just slog through the journalism portion of the major. However, as last semester progressed, I became increasingly envious of the dietitian majors in my food classes. While I took classes on web writing and design, my classmates in my food classes were taking Micronutrients, etc. When I looked to the future, I couldn’t picture myself as a magazine writer….all I could think about was what my future would be like as a dietitian. Unlike my two journalism classes, my Nutrition for the Lifespan and Food Principles classes didn’t feel like school work at all. I was excited to learn, which was a new feeling for me. I finally understood that finding a major that you’re passionate about wasn’t a college myth, but it was something for which you might have to make sacrifices. With that in mind, I FINALLY decided to ditch my fears (and my comfort zone) and change my major to dietetics AND consumer foods, even though it meant an extra year of school and a lot of hard work.

Even though I have been taking food classes for a year, this semester is my first one as a dietetics student. No, it hasn’t been easy, but for the first time in my life I feel like I have a purpose and a goal. I’ve made some pretty crappy grades in Chemistry and Pre-calculus and have had my share of on-campus melt downs, but I want to keep pushing forward to reach the light at the end of the tunnel. Changing my major has challenged me in so many ways, and I’m slowly overcoming those challenges, which is way more rewarding than breezing through journalism classes that were uninteresting to me.

I am finally proud and excited to tell people about my majors and what I’m learning, and while the thought of graduating into “the real world” is still scary, I’m also excited to face it head on as an RD!

Such an amazing story! Sara took a leap and followed her dreams even though it was outside of her comfort zone.

Question: Has there ever been a decision you have made that wasn’t an easy one to make? Was there anything you have done that has been “outside your comfort zone?

Tagged as: college majors, comfort zones, dietetics and consumer foods, guest post, guest post series, sara @ my fancy tuna