A series of missteps - that's probably the best way to describe my life at Notre Dame so far.
For a lot of you, life under the golden dome is a dream come true, a chance to spend four years at a school that you've worked as long as you can remember to get into, well, that wasn't the case for me three years ago.
Figuring out my path at Notre Dame was never a structured route; really it was more a series of events that just sort of happened to fall into place. So for those of you have stepped on this campus, a little weary if you've made the right choice, my advice to you is this: don't worry, Notre Dame is one of the those places that even when things are going wrong, in the end, everything falls into place.
I stepped onto campus with no clue of what I wanted to major in or what I wanted to find out, I just sort of happened into things, and looking back, I wouldn't have it any other way. There have been a lot of moments when I felt lost, I made a lot of mistakes, but a lot of those mistakes turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
There are a lot of things that I definitely didn't plan for. Here are just a few unforeseen events, if you will, that have gotten me to where I am today:
First - I lived in a quad in Badin Hall my freshman year (that's the building with the porch across from CoMo, and yes people live there) with three girls from the Midwest, and being from Long Island, I was a little taken aback. I was paranoid beyond belief that I would have nothing in common with people who live over 800 miles from me. I just moved into an apartment with one of those girls this week - note to myself three years ago, the Midwest is not a foreign country though it may have seemed like it at the time.
Second - I started out as an undeclared Arts and Letters major then switched to the business school the beginning of my sophomore year. Right now, I'm working on a double Finance and English major (yes, I know it doesn't make sense, but in the long run I'm hoping that it will work out). Regardless, I plan to go into journalism (fingers-crossed) at the end of the year, and while it may seem that my majors have nothing to do with journalism, I've learned a lot from both. My finance background came in handy this summer when I was sitting in meetings for the Metropolitan Transit Authority attempting to figure out their budget and just a few of the many many things that were wrong with it. And while analyzing poetry in depth may not interest a lot of people, it doesn't hurt to be able to pound out a five page paper in an hour.
And probably my biggest concern - I always knew that I wanted to go abroad, and I thought that meant going in the spring and not missing football season. It just so happens that I ended up going to London in the fall, and while I missed Notre Dame football, I had a totally different football experience that was life changing (and no I'm not talking about futbol). I ended up interning at the NFL in London, yes American football, for the Giants-Dolphins game. I got to interview players in the locker room and watch a 16-ft robot of Jason Taylor walk around Trafalgar Square. I traded the chance to see the Irish go 3-9 for a chance to see the future Super Bowl Champions play in the pouring rain at one of the best stadiums in the world.
Those are just a few steps along the way that at the time seemed like I was veering off course in the completely wrong direction, but looking back I'm happy with where I've landed. And while those three things were momentous and somewhat life changing I learned a lot of smaller things along the way. Like it may seem that the corner of Angela and 31 is a lot closer if you just take a short cut across the golf course, but trust me, there's a barbed wire fence on the other side. And the time you could have taken to walk around the golf course is about the same amount of time it will take you to get a tangled shirt out of the fence.
I guess what I'm really getting at is that in your four years here a lot of stuff is going to happen, and there will be moments to freak out, but just keep in the corner of your mind that you're at a school where you will meet people to help you out along the way and somehow things seem to work out, that's just Notre Dame, maybe it has something to do with the luck of the Irish.
Deirdre Krasula is a senior Finance and English major at Notre Dame. She hopes to get a job in journalism in Nowheresville, USA come May, until then she plans on salvaging her final college moments, putting of school work to watch meaningless TV and praying that the Irish can at least make it 4-8 this year. She can likely be found in the corner of party singing along to Miley Cyrus and outdated 80s songs with a few friends at hand. If you have any new song suggestions she can be contacted at dkrasula@nd.edu
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
