For some reason, adults love to ask kids this question: “what do you want to do when you grow up?” For years I was scared and confused. I couldn’t bear the thought of repeating the same actions day after day until the casket. This anxiety alone made me lose track of time, but I was confident in one thing. I loved to read, and escape into the mind of a character for a couple of hours to solve their problems with my own reasoning, question their thought processes, and evaluate what I would do to help them. One day I glanced over at my bookshelf and recognized an underlying theme: all of these protagonists had mental disorders. Immediately I got on the internet to watch documentaries and perspectives of people with mental disorders for hours without end, discovering that I began to cry. I had found my passion, and knew it all along, but couldn’t accept the idea because my interest in the treatment of psychological problems never fit into the mold of the cookie cutter jobs that most people around me have.
