Acting on Impulse

People never follow the advice they give. I am a great example of this. After looking over my previous posts, I am struck by the structured thought process my mind appears to follow - well at least attempt to. I would like to say prior to making any big decision I weigh up all the pros and cons, sleep on it, and then make the best possible choice. But in reality, all significant decisions in my life have been made on impulse.

I did my undergrad at UC Santa Barbara and when my parents recommended I do a study abroad program my Junior year, my first reaction: Are you crazy? I live in Santa Barbara, California. This place is amazing! The ‘amazing part’ I was of course referring to was in reference to the parties, not so much the academics, which were great too of course, but hey, I was 19. My parents, slightly disappointed in my narrow outlook on the world, dropped the subject when I didn’t apply for these programs during sophomore (2^nd) year.

Fast forward a about six months; on one of those rare nights in toward the end of my sophomore year, a friend of mine and I were watching the channel E! which was showing a special on the night life in Ibiza. The music, the dancing, the people, the beaches – it all looked like so much fun! A place existed better than Santa Barbara? We turned to each other – we had to go there!

We recruited another friend and decided to plan a month long vacation throughout Europe. My parents were shocked. They had dragged me to Europe a few times before, my dad worked there for quite some time, but I never had any interest and would have much preferred to stay in the US with my friends than be seen touring around Europe with my parents in my early teenage years – I mean how embarrassing to be seen with your parents at 14!

But now, traveling with 2 other girl friends at the age of 19, is another story. Starting in London, we then travelled to Greece, Madrid, and Ibiza traveling American style – that is hotels and suitcases (as opposed to the student standard backpack and hostels, but keep in mind this was pre-Euro when Europe was actually cheap). I then ended my trip in Zurich, where my parents were living at the time, to spend a week with them, before heading back to Santa Barbara. And I fell in love with Europe.

My parents like to think it was their influence and the wining and dining and Swiss excursions that did it, but truth be told, I think it had more to do with the clubs in Ibiza and the dancing in the afternoon at the bar on the beaches in Greece topped off by the sheer excitement of being somewhere totally new. It was the sudden realization that, and yes this is going to sounds like a totally naïve typical American, there was a whole world out there that I didn’t know. I had to go back.

Starting my Junior year back in university, I dropped my Communications major (I was doing a double major with Business Economics) and started taking German classes instead. I signed up for an abroad program in Spain for the summer after my junior year and for a program in Vienna, Austria for fall in my senior year. Of course, one thing led to another and I ended up spending five years after that, with a return to graduate and get a couple of years of work experience in in the U.S., working in Europe. All this, stemming from an impulse decision to go party at the clubs in Ibiza.

So, moral of the story, in case you were wondering whether there even was one: You should always follow what you want, granted this doesn’t involve doing any kind of bodily or emotional harm to others, but keep in mind, that you sometimes don’t always know what you want. And if something comes up that strikes your fancy but doesn’t sit perfectly on the fitted regression line of your predicted future as a function of future decisions, my Stats professor would be so proud, and you don’t have a lot of time to analyze the situation, just do it. Take that impulse decision. And if it turns out to be the wrong one, worst case scenario, your life is a lot more interesting because of it. Mine certainly has been.