from chemistry to wedding cakes

All of my life I have wanted to be a chemical engineer. I know that sounds kind of strange and any one who knows me even the tiniest bit knows that I don’t seems like the kind of girl who would want to study chemistry. I don’t always come off as the most intelligent person, I really don’t know why, and so whenever I tell people what I plan on doing (well, planned actually) they look kind of surprised and confused and usually say something like “reaaaally” or “wow…..” Typically after I have floored someone with my admission that I love chemistry and math and would like nothing better than to work in those fields for the rest of my life I acknowledge that, yes, this is somewhat unusual and then answer the questions that these puzzled people seem to need answered. Usually I have to explain that I don’t really know exactly what I will be doing with my chemistry major and that no, I really don’t plan on teaching but that’s not entirely ruled out. I will then quickly change the topic to something much more normal in hopes of reassuring the person I have been talking to that I am not as crazy or unusual as I have just appeared to be.
I decided that I loved chemistry when I was really young, I think I was between kindergarten and second grade. I had asked for a microscope for Christmas and not only did my parents get me one but they also got me my own little lab set with all sorts of containers and color changing kid safe chemicals for me to play with. I had already had an easy bake oven for a couple of years now and I already loved to play around with mixing the ingredients in different quantities and examining the results. Right about now most of ya’ll reading this probably think that I am the biggest dork ever. Just so ya know, I wasn’t some little pale 7 year old who stayed inside all day playing with chemicals and recording data, I actually had a lot of friends and I looooved to shop even when I was that young so you can just tweak this whole geeky image you probably have of me by adding a cute pink cordurouy mini skirt and those chunky heels that they make for little kids, add a hot pink lab coat and a couple other equally decked out chatty little girls who have just returned from the mall and are anxious to sort through their purchases while that excruciatingly slow light bulb cooks the brownies they have just prepared. That pretty much describes me from the around first grade to eighth although I graduated from the easy bake oven to an actual kitchen and fake colorful chemicals to mainly home designed experiments. In highschool my interests changed very little although I did get more attached to chemistry after finally taking the class.
So now that I’ve described where my love originated I can move on to attempt to explain why it has recently mysteriously disappeared. The love that I have for chemistry and math is still present and has not diminished at all since I started college but my desire to involve those two interests in my future career has absolutely vanished. I have no idea why but I simply don’t want to be a chemical engineer anymore, I still find it fun to work with chemicals and I still greatly enjoy working through a complicated math equation but the drive to do that for the rest of my life just isn’t present. I have decided to change my major to foreign languages with a focus on Spanish simply because I like language and know that Sam plans on working with the banking systems in poor countries and other parts of the world so being multilingual could be extremely useful in that situation. All in all, though, my new major doesn’t represent my true passion, Wedding cake design. I know exactly what I want to do as a career, I want to design and create extravagant wedding cakes. This occupation may be even more random than my chemical engineering thing but I am so so interested in cake decorating. I have been interested in this art for a long time but just recently I have actually realized that I would like to wake up every morning and think, “I’m going to go make a beautiful cake.” I know this sounds really ditzy and probably shallow too and its sounds completely opposite to my interest in chemistry, but if you think about it baking definitely involves chemistry and the sculpting and layering of truly exquisite cakes involves physics so I’m getting my math in. Maybe this is a bit of a stretch but at least I know now what I absolutely would love to do and even though there is no great major that goes with wedding cake design, in that line of work you probably don’t even need a degree.