Over the past year, I have discovered my interest and passion in politics and current events. I regret not pursuing debate clubs in high school, as now I see students years younger than me budding into phenomenal speakers and writers. I feel like because of this, I will be left behind when I try picking up debate club in college. This is reinforced by the fact that I plan to pursue political science in college and most people already have a good amount of experience and knowledge in the field. I am not a born gifted speaker or writer, but I look forward to honing my skills and do not want my late start to hinder me from going far in this field. I lurk around collegeconfidential a lot and it is not uncommon for me to see incoming freshman like me accomplishing more things in their four years of high school than people are able to do in a lifetime. So, is a late start or the lack of prodigy-like talent as much as a setback as I am thinking it is?
The posters on CC are outliers.
No, especially if you’re okay with not doing intercollegiate competition the first year.
Life is all about growing. It’s not a race. If you start of with fewer skills, that just means there’s that much more room for growth.
And if you’re majoring in Political Science, it would be a definite help in your future career.
A friend of mine in college joined our school’s daily newspaper freshman year without any prior experience. He started out doing grunt copy work but was editor in chief by senior year and got a job with one of the top five papers in the country. A few years later he won a Pulitzer Prize.
Follow your dreams!
It’s never too late to start something new, as long as you realize you won’t be amazing at something automatically. It takes hard work for anyone to become good at something, and if that’s what you want, you have to put in the time.
Don’t let CC discourage you. For one thing, you have no idea how capable anyone on the internet actually is. People can list whatever they want, but that means next to nothing in terms of actual skill. And for another, students on CC are the exception not the rule.
As a point of reference, I had a friend who majored in chemistry after never having taken a chemistry class in high school. She started at a remedial level in college and is now attending a top graduate program in Chemistry getting her PhD.