[Detours] From numbers to words to best of both worlds

Editor’s note: Elle Ordonio grew up loving math and being good at it, too, that she thought her future in accountancy has been cut out for her. But somewhere in between, a love affair with writing blooms, forcing her to make difficult choices. Get to know her story. You, too, can share your life’s greatest detours. Here’s how. 

It’s one thing to feel out of place in a party you’ve been dragged to. It’s another to feel out of place somewhere you made an active choice to be in. It’s bone-crushing, sometimes even costly.

The decision to take up the accountancy and business management (ABM) strand in senior high school was a rather easy one to make. After all, I’ve loved numbers my entire life. As a kid, I bagged gold medals in math competitions, craved for new multiplication tricks to learn, and borrowed and studied math books from my friends who were 4 grades older. My affair with numbers saw only one destination point: a life-long commitment to the field of accountancy. It made perfect sense.

My ABM stint brought me good things. I met my ‘squad’, 4 lovely girls who shared the same interests and aspirations as I did. I also met inspiring teachers, mentors who believed in my capabilities. All that buzz translated into good grades, enough for me to get picked to be on a team for a province-wide ABM quiz bee where we were hailed as champions. If it was that perfect, why was there a gaping hole in my chest? Why was my heart yearning for more?

I found the answer during a conversation with my friends from the humanities strand. Somehow, when they mentioned they were writing stories in class, I felt a pang of jealousy. Then it all hit me – I didn’t really like to be a businesswoman, but I did enjoy writing for business. I did enjoy writing for my research subjects and the school paper. I gladly said yes when my groupmates assigned me to write narrative reports about our mini-business. Though I loved numbers, there was nothing more fulfilling than putting words on a page, arranging them to tell a story.

This became more solidified when I filled up my college application. I keyed in business administration & accountancy as my first choice course only for the accountancy part of it but didn’t bother to select business administration on my remaining choices. In an attempt to be rebel, I sneaked in journalism among seven (out of eight) business- or math-related programs.

Lo and behold, I entered university as a journalism freshman.

My first semester in journ was a tug-of-war. Sure, I loved my coursemates and I couldn’t go a day without writing, but the pressure that came with it isn’t something I was prepared for. Being pinpointed and told “Journ majors, I expect good essays from you” in a GE class full of freshmen from different programs made my anxiety levels rise. The anxiety didn’t stop there – it was present when I had to interview my mother for a paper, when I had to count how many meals I would skip so I could fund class trips to news outlets, when I had to tell the class why I picked this major. Something isn’t clicking, and setting foot in our college building felt like trespassing.

It was painful to admit it to myself. It hurt my ego to even think that journalism isn’t the right track for me. It was painful to accept that at 18, when I was supposed to have it all figured out, as my peers’ lives suggest, I still haven’t. It was even more painful to admit it to my family. I felt guilty that all their efforts to send me to school were wasted because I wasn’t good enough for the things I thought I wanted. 

That year I shifted to statistics and got accepted.

It wasn’t easy. I was strongly advised by the college secretary to work on my quantitative skills, upon knowing I was a former writing major. There was then again a moment of doubt when I had tears involuntarily leaking out of my eyes while taking an exam in a major class. To top it all, shifting meant spending five years in college instead of four.

But I am satisfied. I am now about to start my fourth semester as a Statistics major, and my heart is at peace with my decision, knowing my love for numbers and words have now found their home. In the field of research, I do not have to choose between math and writing. 

My detours took up three years of my life, and as tiring as they were, I am grateful for them. In the “wrong” places, I found the right people. In the “wrong” places, I learned to be humble. In the “wrong” places, I learned a lot about myself and picked up different skills from different fields I dipped my toes into. I don’t think I would have grown as much if I had it figured out all along.

Elle Ordonio is a sophomore statistics major who takes creative writing classes on the side. She dreams to be a storyteller in any way possible, be it through the presentation of real-world data, or through making fictional characters come to life.