The Plan Changed

For the longest time, I thought I had to have my future figured out.

I thought college was supposed to lead to one specific career, one specific dream, and one specific version of success. But life had other plans.

In this episode, I'm sharing how my journey from high school to audio engineering college, the dreams that changed along the way, and the paths I never expected ultimately led me to a life I'm proud of. We'll talk about the pressure of junior and senior year, discovering my love for sound, the reality of working in the audio industry, and why I'm finally okay with the fact that my life doesn't look the way seventeen-year-old me imagined.

Sometimes the future we think we're building isn't the one we end up living—and maybe that's exactly how it's supposed to be.

Transcript

College Dreams From Movie Myths

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome back to Just Breathe Confessionals. I'm Daria. And today I want to talk to you about college. You know, the big looming milestone that comes right after the four years of high school you just spent trying to survive. Which is funny because for the longest time I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Actually, let me rephrase that. I had lots of ideas. The problem was they changed every five minutes. Part of that was probably because my expectations of college came almost entirely from movies, which, looking back, maybe wasn't the best source material. I mean, I watched Legally Blonde and immediately decided I was going to be a lawyer. I was going to prove everyone wrong, walk around with a dog all the time, and somehow get into Harvard. None of those things happened. But that's kind of the point of this episode. Because if there's one thing I've learned, it's that life has a funny way of changing your plans. Can

Junior Year Pressure And No Plan

SPEAKER_00 1:21

we talk about junior year of high school for a second? Because I swear that's when everyone suddenly decides you're supposed to know what you're doing with the rest of your life. It's decision year. Teachers start asking, counselors start asking, family starts asking, friends, what college are you going to? What are you majoring in? What do you want to do after high school? And meanwhile, you're sitting there thinking, I don't know. I still need permission to use the bathroom. I remember feeling so much pressure. I felt like everyone else had a plan, a dream school, a major, a direction. And I was still trying to figure out when mine was. I wasn't the best student, but I wasn't the worst. I was kind of just floating in the middle. And honestly, I was okay with that. I knew college was probably an option. I just didn't know what that option looked like at the moment. And as senior year kept getting closer, I remember feeling behind. Not because I wasn't trying. I just genuinely didn't know what I wanted to do. And when you're 17, not knowing what you want somehow feels like you're failing. Looking back now, I realized that's kind of ridiculous to think that way. But at 17, it felt huge. Everything felt huge. I mean, come on. You know exactly what I mean.

Soccer Ends And Theater Begins

SPEAKER_00 2:58

What's funny is this wasn't even my first plan. At one point, I was convinced soccer was gonna be what I went to school for. If you've listened to previous episodes, you know how much soccer means to me. There was a time when I thought maybe college would happen through soccer. Maybe I'd get a scholarship, maybe that would be my path. And then my knee injury happened and the surgery happened, and that path I thought I was on suddenly looked very different. Because around the same time, another door was opening. Theater.

Discovering Sound And Choosing A School

SPEAKER_00 3:40

If you listened to my last episode, you know theater became my home away from home. And through theater, I discovered sound. Most people don't walk into a theater and think about the sound design. They think about the actors, the costumes, the sets, but I became fascinated with what was happening behind the scenes. I loved how sound could completely change a moment. One cue could make an audience laugh, one cue could make them cry, one cue could make them jump out of their seats. And for the first time, I found something that genuinely excited me. So I started looking at schools that had audio engineering programs. Eventually I found a technical college that specialized in audio engineering. And it was literally right down the road. It was a two-year program, and I hadn't really heard of two-year programs. I just thought you had to go to a four-year school. So to find a two-year program that was close to home was honestly perfect. I started just a couple months after graduation because I knew myself. And by that I mean if I took too much time off, there was going to be a really big chance I wouldn't go to college at all. I wasn't exactly known for being the most motivated teenager. So I jumped in. Thank goodness I did. Because college ended up being one of the best experiences of my life. First

The Surprising Joy Of Learning Audio

SPEAKER_00 5:19

of all, who knew learning could actually be fun? Nobody told me that part. Everybody there came from a different background. Some people wanted to be producers, some wanted to make beats, some wanted to work in recording studios, some wanted to do live sound, some wanted to be musicians. Everybody had a different dream. And it was a constant circus of information. And I mean it, constant. I thought I was going to learn how to run a soundboard. Instead, I got thrown into this giant world of live sound, recording, music theory, signal flow, editing, and about a thousand other things I didn't know existed. And somewhere along the way, I started surprising myself. I wrote original songs for projects, which is funny because if you had told me in high school that I'd be writing songs, I'd probably laugh at myself. I also somehow became the designated scream queen. There weren't a lot of girls in the program. So whenever somebody was working on a horror project and needed a female scream, everybody looked at me. And there I was, screaming into microphones. And at one point, I was creepily singing Ring Around the Rosie for somebody's project, which sounds weird because it is weird, but it was also kind of so amazing and satisfying. And while I learned a lot about sound, the biggest thing college gave me wasn't technical knowledge, it was people. I met lifelong friends, I met mentors, people who are still in my life today, people who believed in me, people who pushed me out of my comfort zone, people who helped shaped who I became.

The Hard Truth About Audio Careers

SPEAKER_00 7:23

But one thing I always appreciated was how honest my professors were. They loved the industry, but they didn't sugarcoat it. They were upfront about the realities of working in audio. A lot of opportunities require long hours, experience, and sometimes little or no pay. And that's great if you're in a position where you can afford that. But a lot of people aren't. Because when you're passionate about something, you want passion to be enough. But sometimes passion and practicality don't line up. After

Redefining Success After Graduation

SPEAKER_00 8:19

graduation, I ended up working for the college for a while. And honestly, that felt really cool. I was still surrounded by audio, still using my skills, still connected to something I loved. But eventually that chapter came to an end. And life started moving in a different direction than I expected. For a while, I struggled with that because somewhere in the back of my mind, I had this picture of success. And then one day I realized I was measuring my life against a version of success I created when I was 18 years old. And 18-year-olds don't know everything. Shocking, I know. Because even though I never made it to Broadway, sound never left my life. I still do sound for events. I still edit songs. I edit podcasts, which absolutely counts as sound work. I still help guide theater students who are learning sound. I still get to be involved in productions. I still get to use the skills I spent years learning. The dream didn't disappear. It just found a different home. Maybe not in the way I had originally imagined, but in a way that still brings me joy.

First In The Family And Full Circle

SPEAKER_00 9:45

And maybe that's why I don't look at my life through the lens of what if anymore. Because if I'm being honest, this wasn't the first dream that changed. At one point, I thought soccer was going to be my future. Then that injury happened. At one point I thought Broadway was going to be my future. Then adulthood happened. And somewhere along the way, I realized that every time one path closed, another one opened. Not always immediately, not always in the way I wanted, but eventually. If soccer had worked out, maybe I don't end up spending so much time in theater. If theater hadn't become my second home, maybe I never discovered sound. If I had never discovered sound, maybe I never go to college for audio engineering. If I never go to college, maybe I never meet the friends and mentors who are still in my life today. Life is funny like that. The things that feel like setbacks in the moment sometimes end up changing the entire direction of your story. And maybe the thing I'm most proud of has nothing to do with the career I ended up in. Because when I walked across that graduation stage, I became the first person in my family to graduate from college. The first. And for someone who started senior year, feeling like everyone else had the answers, someone who wasn't sure what college was going to look like, that's something I'm really proud of. If 17-year-old me could see my life now, she'd probably be really confused. She'd probably have questions. She'd probably ask why I wasn't working on Broadway shows. But I think she'd also be proud. Because somewhere along the way, I stopped measuring my life by whether I followed the exact plan and started measuring it by whether I was happy. And today, my cup is full. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Just Breathe Confessionals. Until next time, just breathe.