Greetings! My name is Stephanie. I am a current first-year and an excited new CP&R blogger. I am really looking forward to share my experiences and my knowledge about all career-related things through this outlet in the coming months. In this first post, it might make sense to offer some background about where I come from and what I have been up to in my time at Scripps.

I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. As I came to understand the fast-paced way of life in the cultural, social, and political hot spot over time, I also quickly determined how I hoped to one day contribute and fit in to this engaging society.  Very early on I was drawn to the art of communications.

In August 2012, Claremont became my new home. With a naïve, yet determined, belief that I knew exactly how my future would turn out, I resolved that English and Media Studies would be my intended fields of study, as these subjects seemed to correspond with my interests in journalism.

As the weeks went on, I became more familiar with the opportunities offered by Scripps life and less confident in my initial decisions regarding my major. G.E.s, cocurriculars, and a plethora of interesting people have a way of wedging open narrow mindsets. It did not take long after interacting with these engaging influences to determine that my interests span across a wide variety of disciplines; this both excited and worried me.

By the end of my first semester, I was unsure of what I wanted to study and more anxious than ever before about not knowing what could happen in my future. Upon registering for spring classes, I decided to continue with my G.E.s so I could keep dipping my toes in different subjects without committing wholly to one field. Politics, environmental analysis, anthropology… is it possible to study everything? My expanding brain unwittingly relinquished the control I once felt I had over my future, and I ended up where I am now, in this spring semester, on unsteady feet. How is it possible that I will be declaring in one year?

Despite my wary attitude towards The Great Unknown (as I have since renamed my future), I have found that the mind-stretching quality of college has been a great blessing.  Without awareness of all the paths, the ideas, and the opportunities that are out there (to which I have become somewhat privy in my short time at Scripps), how could I have ever known what I wanted to do?

So what have I learned? You do not need to know exactly what you want to do with your life before entering college; an open mind is actually extraordinarily helpful! Part of my college experience has been learning along the way, and because of this I hope I will have confidence in the path I decide to follow… as I figure it out. This summer I am pursuing an internship with a nonprofit organization around the Bay Area with the intention of better gauging and understanding potential career options. I will be detailing all these experiences through this blog in real time! With the help of CP&R, I look forward to making The Great Unknown a little less daunting and a little more tangible without losing any of the excitement.