The week after spring break is always a hard one. Most come backwith half the amount of brain cells they left with and enoughstories to fill an entire week’s worth of story-telling.

I had plans to go snowboarding in Colorado with my buddy Andy,but plans fell through, and I stayed home. Well, it’s morelike due to lack of funds, I stayed home and worked myself to anearly grave.

I’ll make up for it, though. In fact, I’ll make upfor years of spring breaks spent at home next year. Spring break mysenior year will be an absolute riot.

Besides working, I spent much of my time re-evaluating what Iwant to do with my life, and that is never an easy task.

Cousin Davy presented me with two schools of thought. I shallquote him: “In one fashion, you can live your life inpassion, spin your wheels without traction, go fulllimit until your satisfaction. On another day, you listen towhat others have to say, making sure composuresdon’t stray, consider image conscious kinds of play, thinking‘what is right’ is always the way.”

He claims to have battled Eminem.

I just realized that I have nearly wasted the past three yearsof my life, studying something that I do not love, pursuingsomething that is far from a dream.

I remember being six years old and wanting to become a writer.What happened to that girl? Why is it that she didn’t pursueit whole-heartedly into her college years?

What did she do? She took the safe route, getting a usefuldegree that will get her a job. Actually, she wasn’t evenplanning on getting a job upon graduation. Get this: she wanted togo to law school.

I’m glad I came upon this epiphany in time to stop myself.How miserable would I have been realizing this halfway into lawschool? What if I had gone on to pursue that? Fifteen years fromnow, I’d be some lawyer working for corporate America. We allknow that lawyers marry lawyers and eventually breed lawyers, soI’d end up with some big shot lawyer husband and screwed upchildren whom we abandon due to our work. He’ll have anaffair with his secretary, while I trot around with the hot younglawyer at my firm who is fresh out of law school. We would besuccessful in our careers but complete failures in the fulfillmentof our own happiness, which would lead to a messy divorce thatsplits up property and family alike. Boy, am I glad I realized thisnow.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we compromise what welove for what we want? To keep up with the Jones? For the expensivecar, the big house? We lose awareness of ourselves in our dailyconcerns, tasks and duties that are required for the fulfillmentand maintenance of that American Dream. I am ashamed to say that Iam guilty of this.

So now what? Well, the hard part is going to be breaking thenews to my Asian parents.

“Mom, Dad – I’m not going to law school.”

“Oh, okay, so you’re going to medicalschool?”

“No, no med school either.”

“Okay, so you’re going to become an engineer afterall?”

“Ummm, no. I’m going to become a writer. I want tobe a writer for a sitcom, publish a book, maybe even write anoriginal screenplay that will blow Hollywood away. I just want towrite.”

“You WHAT?”

And that’s when you hear a lot of yelling and screaming inVietnamese.

If I’ve learned anything at all in the last three years,it’s to let your heart lead you. Once you find something, oreven someone, you love, never let it (that person) go at any cost,because your happiness is on the line. In the end, all that mattersis your happiness.

Find whatever it is that you are passionate about and pursue itlike no other, because passion makes up for everything.

I’ll leave you with a question Cousin Davy posed on me:”Do you cliff dive or run around in a little house onthe prairie?”

Ann Truong is a columnist for The Daily Campus. She may bereached at [email protected].