In my freshman year of college, my fashion professor had us read out loud the names of famous designers. I butchered several names, it was bad, it was really bad. I barely knew any of this stuff prior to that class and constantly questioned if I was moving in the right path as a fashion major because it was something I chose based on another passion of mine, art; which was a passion I became interested in because I quit dance.

I started going to dance classes at the age of 3, but I was about 9 or 10 when I expressed to my instructors how I was interested in competitive dancing. At this time, I wasn’t showing FA symptoms but I was during my years in competition. I got frustrated when I could not balance my extensions, or do pirouettes like the other dancers. I didn’t know why that was happening before my FA diagnosis, and I was just so tired and angry about it that I stopped practicing. By my third year of competition, which was also my last year of dancing, I was now aware of FA. There were so many times where I would attempt a double-turn and end up falling on the ground so I made the tough decision to quit once the season was over. 

Dance was my whole life before FA, so I thought, Now what am I going to do? Once I began high school, I absolutely loved my drawing & painting class, and even took painting classes that following summer. Although I deeply missed dance, art quickly became my new passion (and I still paint sometimes today, my 2 most recent ones are shown below!) Along with art classes, I took fashion illustration classes for the rest of high school. Those 4 years of art and fashion led me to wanting to pursue it somehow after college. So since I loved drawing croquis (fashion figures) and clothes so much, I thought why not major in fashion design? I loved drawing but had no idea about anything else involving fashion. Marist College seemed to love my work too because I was one of the only 25 fashion design students admitted that year. That is something that I still am super proud of.

Before attending Marist, I dreamed of what it would be like to draw up my own clothes and bring them to life. That didn’t last for too long because, at the third week of college, I decided to make a slight change from a fashion design to a fashion merchandising major. I enrolled in a sewing class those first few weeks, so with barely any sewing experience and not-so-great hand and coordination skills, it became super challenging to keep up with the rest of the class. Not many people thought the major switch was a big deal because I was continuing to study in the same field. However, it was difficult for me to let go of that fashion designer title I worked so hard towards, just like I forcibly gave up the professional dancer dream. I constantly, and I mean constantly, doubted my career path the remaining freshman year. Yet, I was determined to give my new major another try. Thank God I did because in the fall of sophomore year I fell so in love with fashion, learning about fashion history, famous designers, vogue, current trends, and drawing garments via Adobe Illustrator (which is shown in the top picture!) These were all of the things I had no clue about in freshman year.

Although fashion merchandising was still the right choice for me, I was not expecting to find another passion, writing. At the end of that fall semester, my advisor told me to consider a minor and I initially thought, no way am I taking extra classes. But then I thought about it more, and decided to take a look at the offered minors; the one that stood out to me the most was creative writing. I figured I would enroll in an introduction class next semester and if anything, I could drop it or count it as an elective. Well, it just so happens that was my favorite college class I had taken so far. To say the least, by the end of that semester, I was minoring in creative writing.

It took me a year to recognize that I made the right decision, but most importantly, I realized my interests are continuously growing with me too. And now we’re here, a junior Fashion Merchandising major and Creative Writing minor starting her own blog!!