SUNY Potsdam and St. Rose

I went to SUNY Potsdam for my undergraduate degree.  I majored in Childhood Education and my specialization was English.  That means I am certified to teach grades 1-6.  I believe as I entered SUNY Potsdam my freshman year, I planned to stay there an extra two years to finish my master's degree.  Potsdam was the only school I applied to for my undergrad because I knew I wanted to go there.  I applied in October so that if I didn't get in, I had an opportunity to apply somewhere else.  I got in pretty quickly.  My senior year of college, I applied to Potsdam for graduate school.  I didn't think of going anywhere else.  I was accepted and even registered for classes for the start of the fall semester.  When you go to graduate school for something education related, you have four choices as your major.  Naturally within each major, you have more specific choices you can major in.  The four I could choose from were literacy, special education, curriculum studies, and technology.  I chose educational technology because it was something different and I figured I would stick out in a crowd on my resume.  It turns out most schools are looking for people with a literacy background, oh well.  Anyway, I applied to be a graduate RD at Potsdam for the following year.  An RD is a resident director.  They are in charge of the resident assistants and an entire dorm building.  It would mean I would have free tuition.  One Monday in April, one of my freshman residents said something to me that drastically changed my life forever.  I don't remember his exact words.  He said something like, "You know, you don't have to go to Potsdam for graduate school if you don't want to."  At that point, I had gone to Potsdam for four years.  I was mentally drained.  There was a lot of emotional stuff that happened my junior and senior years that left me exhausted.  I knew I needed and desperately wanted a drastic change, but didn't know what the change was.  The moment that resident said that, I knew what I needed to do.  I started looking at what St. Rose offered since it was a college close to my home town.  I knew the school was known for education.  Luckily, the application deadline did not pass.  I did research the following day, figured out that I was going to major as an Educational Technology Specialist.  I only needed a year and a half of graduate school instead of two because I already student taught and didn't have to do it again.  I called my mom that day and she was not happy that I was making such a drastic change so late in the year.  She wanted to know what event happened that made me want to leave Potsdam so badly.  The truth is, there is no specific event that made me want to leave.  I just knew I needed a change and this was the change.  The application was sent out the next day.  I withdrew my application to be a graduate RD.  I didn't get my official letter of acceptance from St. Rose until early July.  I had to find classes that were not full.  I was lucky because I only had to take 10 classes my entire graduate career.  I took 3 classes each semester and one over the summer.  Each semester, I took 2 online classes and one in person.  My summer class was also online.  Online classes are awesome, but require a lot of busy work so that the teacher knows you know the information.  I graduated in December 2010 with my masters and walked the stage in May 2011.  I was able to substitute teach both years that I was in graduate school.  It was very tough at times because I sometimes subbed 5 days a week.  Then I had to go home and do my graduate work.  However, switching colleges was the best decision I ever made in life.  Sometimes you need to take that risk.  The moral of this lengthy post is that you need to do what you feel is best for you.  Your parents might not approve of your choices.  If it's something that will make you happy in the long run, do it.  Don't let anyone or anything hold you back in life.  Take risks and learn from your mistakes.  Don't regret any decisions in life and don't look back and say, "I wonder what would have happened if I had done it this way."  You will never know until you try it!