"It's Not as Scary as You Think"

I took leave because I thought I was wasting my time at Brown. I was supposedly studying music and biology, and felt as though I wasn't performing at either of them. I guess you could call it a sort of junior slump—I was drifting around getting B's and hating it, so I decided to do something. I'm lucky in that I also had another reason to leave. My girlfriend lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, and I desperately wanted to spend some time with her. In the summer, we had made a plan for me to move out there in the spring, but in my head it still seemed like a fantasy. I think it was only through her help that I was able to muster up the courage to actually go. I spent nine months in Vancouver, working as a gardener for my girlfriend's parents' next-door neighbor's boutique landscaping firm. Since there's not a huge amount of landscaping to be done January-March, I also worked briefly at two coffeeshops. In Vancouver I discovered that the "real world" is not a giant black void, and that college is a weird-ass combination of not-enough and way-too-much time. On a more personal note, I found that I didn't need that much music in my life and decided that I was going to drop my music major. Taking time off was the actually the best decision I've ever made, and I feel proud for having done it. It was a grand personal journey, but I also feel as though I was able to contribute substantially to other people's lives. Upon my return, I felt older, wiser, stabler, more found, more considerate, and most of all happier. But it was also deeply confusing—I needed to rebuild relationships with friends at Brown, and I because I had dropped my music degree, I felt like a freshman again, shopping all of these intro courses in departments I'd never heard of. I wholeheartedly recommend taking time off if you have somewhere to go, but understand that you WILL be fundamentally different by the end of your experience. I left because I wanted to squeeze every last drop out of Brown's lemon. If you feel as though you aren't doing that, you should take some time to step back and consider what you really want.