In addition to my English major, I have decided to add on a Dance minor. And I feel exactly like Mia Thermopolis in The Princess Diaries when she says, "just in case I am not enough of a freak already, let's add a tiara!" Just in case I am not completely unemployable, let's add an unrelated, academically inferior minor!
When I tell people I am an English major, they tilt their heads and smile, a smile that does not quite reach their eyes and they undeniably always ask, "what are you going to do with an English major? Teach?" And I smile, a smile that definitely does not reach my eyes and explain that their is a major called education for students who want to become teachers. I want to write for BuzzFeed.
At Five Guys on a Sunday night, a group of almost junior college students discuss what we want to do in the very near future after we leave this place called college. I announce my future goals, and get harassed with the pertinent question of why I want to write for this humorous newspaper when everyone else has plans to change the world.
When I came to college, I was opened up to the fact that people other than me felt not good enough. I was not the only one who felt like I was drowning. Our inadequacies were further tested with grades in these classes that were harder than before. I had no idea what I wanted to do, I had no idea who I was and I had no idea who I wanted to become. Everything was always a little too much.
In between studying and class and papers, I would browse BuzzFeed. And somewhere in the midst of all the projects and papers and labs, BuzzFeed was no longer a website that helped me pass the time, but something that helped me feel like I am worth it. I matter.
The BuzzFeed articles related to everything I was going through, titles ranging from the "Finals Week, As Told By "Elf"" to "Making Sense Of Suicide With Sylvia Plath." I felt like my entire being was related to these articles. I finally felt like other people are going through the exact same thing as me and are having the exact same doubts as me. For the first time, I felt like everything was going to be ok.
I read BuzzFeed everyday, and everyday there is an article that relates to what I am going through. Just yesterday there was, "31 Songs From The '00s That Understood Your Teen Angst" and "23 Songs Every Former Emo Kid Will Never Forget", and sure enough just a couple of days ago I was reminiscing with my roommate about emo songs after my terribly misguided teacher called the Airborne Toxic Event an emo band, and created my own playlist of have beens filled with All Time Low, My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy.
BuzzFeed is the place where I learned about Shane Burcaw's "Laughing at my Nightmare" and my favorite quote by Kaye Toal in "What I've Learned About How To Be A Girl", "I feel, very carefully, not much at all."
What my friends do not understand is that BuzzFeed is changing the world. It is this social media phenomenon that has helped so many people like me understand that we are not going through this alone. It helps me laugh on a hard day, when I do not think I deserve to laugh.
Every single day, BuzzFeed gives me something to look forward to and something to aspire to. So instead of feeling like my life is stagnant in my ever so liberal English major and Dance minor, I know that I have a goal, and my goal may not be accomplished right now, or in a few years, but every single day, I am going to write and one day I hope I will be sitting in a chair with a desk on the eighth floor of two-hundred fifth avenue, writing for BuzzFeed.
I know that my goal along with all these other aspiring scientists and writers is to change the world, and I want to do that by relating to someone, someone like me who may have been having a hard day. I want to help people know that they are never alone and that there is good in every single thing we do. Together, we can change the world.
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