Driven Down the Wrong Path

I cannot help but wonder if I have lost my ambition. I guess I started wondering where my drive had gone when my sister commented on the fact that I was terribly driven in high school. I stayed up late to do homework and to study. I got straight A's and felt like a failure if I received anything lower than a 95 on an exam. Where did that kind of drive come from? I have this horrific memory from 4th grade where I procrastinated on our big California Missions project. I ended up doing the report all on one night, after the due date. And I slipped it onto the teacher's desk several days after the deadline. Mrs. Jordan, bless her heart, had seen it all the tricks in the book and couldn't be so easily fooled. I was caught red-handed and punished accordingly. My mom was horrified. So, I definitely wasn't driven in 4th grade. Maybe junior high? I am not sure.

What I do know is that the kind of maniacal work ethic I possessed in high school certainly dissipated by the time I entered college. I cared about school, but I was much more interested in uncovering passion and purpose. Sometimes, I wonder if I studied comparative literature as kind of an easy way out. I don't mean to imply that literature demands less talent, discipline, and intellect than other academic pursuits. But, for someone who has always written with comfort, was choosing literature as a major the equivalent of settling? I have been wondering what my life would be like if I had studied biology or engineering.