University life is weird, not in an ironic way, but in a way that has defied all expectations I had.

To begin, I didn’t start with journalism in mind or anything remotely associated with it. Like many before me, I was a starry-eyed freshman with delusions of greatness in an exciting field such as health sciences or possibly law.

My poison of preference was medical school and the allure of being a doctor. I never did decide, but at the time I felt that pediatric surgeon was my calling, after all, I had been a very sickly child growing up, so it made sense. At least it did for me.

Anyways, I started in fantastic fashion; I had good grades and was fairly motivated on getting out of UTEP as quickly as possible and on to med school. It’s important to point out that this is an incredibly hard and stupid thing to try and achieve. You don’t really dictate the pace; you like to think that you do, but once you actually start taking on some of the upper division classes, then you quickly realize that you are at the mercy of professors and the such.

Surprisingly, I prevailed with little damage to my grades. Of course, it wasn’t perfect 4.0 territory, but I was fairly decent through it all and had good hopes for the future.

Around year of two of the adventure, things got hard and a drastic change had to be taken. I would love to say that I had a fantastic reason to quit, but the reality was that I just sort of stopped caring. I no longer felt passion for medicine, and I began dreading classes along with the extracurricular effort needed to stand out.

It was both an interesting and scary time in my collegiate career. I could continue with the science path and eventually end up with a degree in something. I would have still been a college graduate and in the science field. Sure, nothing would have guaranteed that I would have loved it or made any decent money out if, but it was a hell of a lot better than just dropping out.

The problem was that I needed to make a quick decision, the class work was not going to get any easier, and I could jeopardize my academic standing if I began dropping classes or failing. After some soul searching, I decided to stop with the science and focus on something else. The very next week I changed my status to general studies and began my journey in search of a new meaning in my academic life. There was only one problem, that didn’t happen.

I was wise enough to change my degree, but after that I was lost and didn’t know what I was going to do. For the better part of three years (senior year of high school and my first two university years) I had been dead set on a goal that I though was everything for me. This period of my life is actually rather scary, as the lack of direction almost forbade a feeling of certain doom. This is not true by any means, but at the time it felt like it.

I spent a considerable amount of time, which to this day I still can’t bring myself to accept, lying and avoiding everyone that cared about me. I would lie, claiming that graduation was just around the corner and such things.

Eventually everyone caught on, but the only one that confronted me about it was my mother. As most caring mothers do, she proceeded to tell me I was an idiot, but that the situation was manageable. I was still the same person; I had just deviated from the path a bit.

To summarize a bit, I eventually settled on journalism out of my love for sports; or so I thought at the time.

Through some matter of luck, faith or destiny (whatever you want to believe), I landed on The Prospector’s front door. I had nothing to offer, didn’t even have the decency of printing a resume. But due to some strange reason, my boss decided to bring me on as an intern. From there I moved up to copy editor and the rest has been pretty much history.

This column is not supposed to be some feel good story that lifts your spirit. If anything, you can look at it as a weird tale of how things worked out for one graduating senior.

Life has a way of working out sometimes, you still have to bust you ass, but if you have the right attitude it can work out.

I would like to thank everyone on The Prospector staff for everything they have shown me. My editors that showed me the ropes of journalism, my fellow reporters that helped and inspired me to be a better writer, and my boss who gave a random guy a chance to prove himself.

It’s been fun, weird at times, but fun.

Alonso Moreno may NOT be reached at [email protected].