Go For It

Autonomy means self-government. When it is applied to humans it means to take control of his/her life: self control. This, along with mastery and purpose, led a person closer to motivation 3.0. There have only been a few cases were I had the freedom to study what I wanted or explore something new that I was curious about. Most of those times consisted of me being in front of a computer (when I am suppose to be doing homework) and looking up random articles on Wikipedia that I thought were interesting. This I called Wikipedia Randomnis.

Then I join The School for Ethics and Global Leadership (SEGL). While I was there, I told classes with people who were experts in their field and really enjoyed teaching. The highlight of the entire semester, though, would have to be Odyssey Week. To clarify what that means, Odyssey was a two week experiment (we were the first semester to do this) that began with a scavenger hunt around Washington, DC and our own organized case study that could be about anything we wanted it to be about. In the scavenger hunt portion, I was given an envelope with three questions about who I am as a person and what I cared about. My advisor told me where to go; I had to do this journey alone though. The journey took me to many places in the greater DC area. Once I arrived at my location, I sat and reflected about what in the exhibit had to do with me. It is very open ended and very inspirational. My favorite part of the odyssey was when I arrived at the Struggle for Freedom exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibit showed how people who were different (African-American, people who identified as LGBTQ, Native Americans, women and the disabled) lived in a time when no one cared about there rights and what they did to improve their lives. It just left me wondering: how could anyone be treated like that?

The second part of Odyssey was when we got the chance to organize a meeting with our elected official (or their staffers) and other NGO's that could help us understand the topic we were researching. I choose a topic that I wanted to learn more about: abortion. This required a ton of work. It required us to send out emails, call people and organize a meeting with people. This was way easier said then done. It was easier said then done. People would always say that they were busy doing whatever they are doing, they didn’t organized meeting with young people and one women even yelled at me. In the end though, after many many tries, I finally got a meeting with Emily Dillard who was the Legislative Aide to Texas Senator Cornyn. She was very helpful, willing to answer any questions I had and told me more about the Senators stance on the issue.

Overall, it was a two week odyssey that showed me the true power of Autonomy and what it can really do. Do what you honestly care about doing! If you have the choose to do the things you have a passion for or simply want to learn something new that could soon become a passion, you should go for it.