It is incredibly common for college students to question everything about their lives and their rapidly approaching futures, everything from if they have chosen the right major, to what they will do with the degree they struggled to earn, all the way to if they even have what it takes to succeed in the field they chose. I am no exception to this. As a communications and journalism major, I am filled with a never-ending stream of questions about how my life is going to play out.

First, with every piece I write I have to ask myself if it actually sounds any good at all. Anybody who writes for other people can probably agree that one of our greatest fears is that people will absolutely hate what we wrote. We have to be clear, interesting, engaging and so much more, but after rereading our words for the thousandth time, we start to wonder why anybody else would ever take the time to read it. While we are just being too hard on ourselves, it is nearly impossible not to over-analyze everything we write.

The second question I cannot keep off my mind is if I will ever be able to work less than three writing jobs at a time to make a decent living. It is of course completely possible to find jobs in the journalism field that will live up to the highest expectations you could have, but it seems as though these are hard to come by. At this point in my experience it has been necessary for me to juggle two or three jobs involving writing or outside work just to handle my rent and tuition. For some reason though, this has not deterred me from this path. If working this hard now means I am getting closer to the job of my dreams, I certainly won't regret all of these early mornings and late nights spent writing and brainstorming.

One last question that plagues my mind is if I actually need a degree that says I know how to write. It just feels a bit strange at times to think about the fact that I am paying thousands of dollars to go to school to write, rather than for a major such as nursing or engineering where it would be unimaginable to simply forego earning a degree. However, when I stop to think about it, there is an incredible amount of information that I have to master if I hope to become a successful journalist. There is the dreaded AP style guide and endless grammar rules, the always important code of ethics, and of course the essential training on how to interview sources effectively, among so many other lessons. Even though paying for a degree in writing or journalism sounds unnecessary at times, there is so much more to this challenging and exciting major than you may first expect.

Every college major comes with its challenges, but it is important to embrace the doubts you have and move past them in order to excel at what you love.