When I was a freshman in high school I came to Mizzou during FFA Week and job shadowed Greg Horstmeier, an agricultural journalist at the time. I was given the grand tour around campus and even got to sit in on a class. It was a gorgeous fall day and I fell in love with Mizzou and knew where I was going after high school. Catch-22, I was ready to be in college, right then and there- it made the next three and half years a bit of a struggle because I knew I was just doing what I had to in order to get through high school and make it to where I really wanted to be, college. I was ready to be in classes that I enrolled it, with professors who loved their topics and others who were in class because they wanted to be, not because the law makes them.
This past January, I went on a trip to Brussels, Belgium to study the European Union and the Common Agriculture Policy. Myself along with another undergraduate student went on the trip with seven graduate students earning their master's degrees in public policy and agricultural economics. It was an intense four day trip bouncing from one EU building to another listening to speakers. I was really able to learn more opportunities for international agriculture and had a great international experience.
This evening, we met for the second time since returning. The firs time we got together and chatted over Shakespeare's pizza. This time we discussed our trip and the one-page papers we typed up for each place we visited in Brussels. We were there for three and a half hours, having a great conversation on the EU, what happened while we were there, projects and papers we have been working on upon returning, and hypothesis of the EU now and in the future. Just like a freshman in high school when it hit me that I was meant to go to MU and I had the desire and ambition to do whatever it would take to get there, I got that same feeling after having hours of conversation about the EU trip and what we learned and took from the trip. I rarely, if ever, get to have such an in depth, serious and intelligent conversation in my undergraduate classes, but talking with the group of graduate students and ag economist professor, I now know exactly where I'm supposed to be after my undergrad.
I don't just plan on going to grad school but I WANT to go. I want to be surrounded by others who are studying something they feel passionately about, something they want to do for the rest of their lives. I have been sparked again with that passion and ambition to know where I am and where I want to go. It's a really good feeling to know where I am headed and that it's something that I truly want deep down inside with no hesitations or reservations. It's always a relief to know where I am heading in life- especially when it comes to the end of the school year! :)
