Nate Hardin

Cant Earn a Salary with a Pipe Dream

The emergence for my passion for English came about during my time in High School,
during my senior year when I was made to decide my future. This choice for any high school
student comes with a bit of anxiety. Were made to choose, seemingly all at once, the best
college that will lead us into our futures and the right major that will create a profession that will
both provide for us and stimulate us throughout our adult years. It wasnt until later in my senior
year, in discovering my acceptance into Ball State, that I really decided to contemplate my
future. I scrolled along Ball States web pages trying to find the major for me. How did I want to
define myself at this University, or more so, for the rest of my life? Did I want to teach? Did I
want to engineer? The next question that came into mind was not what I wanted to do, but
instead what I could do.
What I gathered from what my parents called, growing up was that the purpose of my
continued education was so I could better myself, a term once again provided by my parents.
In high school, I learned that the term better yourself simply meant that I was expected to
contribute to society in some way. I was expected to add my knowledge and experiences to
maintain the cohesion of our economic system. So then the question I asked myself senior year
of high school evolved from what I could do to, instead, what did I want to contribute?

As I contemplated this question, lying back on my bed, picking aimlessly at the threads
on my sheets as summer slowly drifted by, I thought about the skill set I was equipped with at the
time that would be an efficient contribution to society. I could draw a little. I wasnt a bad
babysitter. I mowed lawns and trimmed hedges during my school breaks. In my mind, I sorted
different applications of these minute skills. None were appealing, though I was raised in a
family in which none of the members had an education level above high school. And from these
members, I learned that doing what you had to do was a part of growing up.
Because of this belief, I only let the prospect of writing briefly cross my mind. I couldnt
take care of myself with the salary of a writer. I couldnt take care of my grandmother, or my
younger siblings, with a salary like that. I couldnt take care of my family with a pipe-dream.
Stories, small histories from my grandmothers days in Haiti, were what often invaded my
thoughts. I would write those stories down, add my own variations to them, and alter them until
they became something completely new. I kept at them until a ten page story was a 100 page
story. I kept at it until a 100 page story was a 300 page story.
I didnt have a definition of passion before starting my freshman year at Ball State. I
didnt know that my hours of writing, sometimes going nights without sleeping, were a passion.
Of all the versatile skills I would come to know upon enrolling at Ball State University, this, the
knowledge of passion, is the most valuable to me. It was the passion that convinced me to
declare myself a Creative Writing major. It is very passion that I want to use to further myself in
anything that I do.
With Creative Writing as my declared major, I have been able to explore the English
language as well as surrounding subjects such as literature and rhetoric in depth. I have been able

to gain multiple scopes and ideas from different professors who have given me their own
viewpoint on English subjects. And more so, I was encouraged to expand my ideas on the
technique of interpretation and format of essays and writing as well as expand on literary ideas.
Comparable to the questions I was posed with at the start of my senior year of high
school, I was encouraged to ask more questions and understand literature and writing in multiple
ways. I became interested in human values and ideals and I registered for courses surrounding
myth and classical culture.
The study of Classical Culture thrives off of questions. Stories arent just stories. Myths
arent just myths. There is an entire cultural setting behind a story; there is a society, often
different from our contemporary one. Usually classical societies are exceptional and things that
are exceptional encourage individual curiosity, research and understanding. And because I had so
many questions about the myths I heard, because I had so many questions about ancient rhetoric
and writing styles, I took up a minor in classical culture to further study the patterns, values and
ideals that constructed ancient literature, poetry and epic. The undertaking of this minor
increased my passion for writing as well as my need for self-assessment.
I am currently a Junior in college, taking my final capstone course, preparing to finish my
major. Though I am not quite prepared to end my time at Ball State just yet, I feel that I have
absorbed so much information about writing, about classics and about my own passion that my
confidence has soared regarding my career options and life goals. Upon declaring Creative
Writing as my undergraduate major, Ive been able to obtain skills that are incomparable. This
major focuses on analysis, acumen, expression, but more so, versatility that allows me not only

to perceive writings and works and their components, but also the components of any problem or
situation in any field of work. And once again, this major introduced me to passion.
What I have come to understand through my years of college, was that passion was not
the only thing that I could count on to get me through exams, job interviews, and late night study
sessions. It took diligence and openness, an ability to accept knowledge that may be beyond
understanding. In my first Creative Writing class, my Professor read aloud and explained a
passage from a short story by Kurt Vonnegut. He said that Art is about putting yourself out
there. You have to be willing to claim it [art] and talk about it. And, simply, what makes
something art, is that people like it. Thats all. It was this statement that started to change to my
perception of what I wanted from writing. Passion was not the only crutch I had to lean on when
it came to creative writing. My own interpretations mattered as well as others, and leaving
myself open to be criticized and corrected was the best way to make my work better.
Though my passion may have not changed, my definition of it surely did. Passion is one
part desire and two parts diligence. These are the pieces that have brought my goals at Ball State
into fruition.