Where do you see yourself in 10 years? It’s a simple question with a not-so-simple answer. When I sit in an interview, I can fire back quickly with thorough answers to questions like “What’s your greatest weakness?” and “What sets you apart from other candidates?” but saying where I see myself 10 years from now is enough to make my palms sweat and to make me trip over my own words. Yes, it’s a simple question, but is it a reasonable one?
As my roommate pours time and energy into studying for her Organic Chemistry exam, stressing and even crying over the material; losing time and missing opportunities to hang out with friends or get involved in other activities, I always ask her why she even bothers. She always answers that it’s what she’s passionate about, and so in the long run, it will be worth it.
Even watching her struggle through a pre-med major’s coursework, I can’t help but feel envious that she is so sure and so certain that she has found her passion. In today’s society, all young adults feel pressure to find their calling before even entering into college. Though one can occasionally meet people that have known what they’ve wanted to do since they were kids, I don’t think it is reasonable to expect most 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds to know what they want to do for the rest of their lives. People are quick to tell you that you should do what makes you happy or do what you love, but they don’t seem to have a solution to the problem of not knowing what that is. I’ve come to accept that I have no clue where I want to be in 10 years, never mind where I want to be in 30, and though I still get nervous from time to time, I’ve also learned that that’s okay.
Although it would be nice to know exactly who you are before you enter into some of the most transformative years of your life, that is not the case for most of us. Unfortunately, students don’t get much time to figure this out. We essentially get one or potentially two years to try different classes and majors before it is time to pick something and stick with it. With all this pressure, it is only normal to feel some natural anxiety, the way I have been since I was in high school.
It may seem like everyone has everything figured out, but it is important to realize that most of our peers don’t, and lot of our parents didn’t either. I recently spoke to my uncle on the phone about what was going on in my life. When he asked me what I was planning to study, I said Finance and shrugged my shoulders, noting that I wasn’t sure I even liked Finance at all. He laughed and told me something that has since changed my mindset. He told me that it’s okay that I don’t know. He majored in English literature, tried writing for a while, before becoming a travel agent for a few years, before eventually going to law school and later becoming a judge. Sometimes it takes years, maybe even decades, to know what’s really out there, and it’s okay to quit and try something else.
I know that what I end up majoring in might be very different from what I may be doing years in the future. College is our time to figure out who we are as individuals and what we want to accomplish in our lives, and I’m intent on taking all the time I need to figure this out. Like so many of my fellow peers. I have no idea where I’m going, or even where I want to be, but I am confident that with time, experimentation, and a little faith, life falls into place. And at some point, everything does end up working out.
