I've known that I wanted to be a journalist since I was in 5th grade. Weird, I know. I saw Marley and Me and was obsessed with how John Grogan got to write for a newspaper. Like most people, my interests changed drastically from 5th grade to junior year of high school when I was applying to colleges. Little did I know that my interests would expand so much between then and now.

At 17, I got accepted into University of Missouri's journalism program and was ecstatic. While Mizzou is still my dream school and journalism is still my dream career, I wish I would've had more time to discover what I wanted to do with my life. Freshman year of college, I discovered my deep love of psychology. A serious fear gripped me when I realized how I would have to change majors if I decided to pursue a Psy D instead of a BA in journalism, so I stuck with journalism.

At the end of my sophomore year, I fell in love with everything true crime and law. I listen to podcasts, watch documentaries and take a deep interest in criminal cases involving murder. I began to wonder if I would've been happier pursuing a law degree. At that point, it was far too late to change my major if I wanted to graduate on time so I again stuck with journalism.

I started my junior year a few weeks ago and while I am still very excited to be graduating with my BA in a field I love and am talented in, I can't help but wonder if there was something else out there that would've made me even happier than journalism does. What if I had chosen wrong?

Having to choose a path for your entire life at 17 is B.S. to me.

We aren't allowed to drink alcohol until we are 21 due to our brain still forming. We can't vote or get married until we are 18 because that is when we are considered closest to mature. But yeah, 17 seems like a good age to choose the career you're stuck in for the next 50 years of your life, right?

If you come into college as an undecided major, everyone looks at you like you don't have yourself together, but how the heck are we really supposed to know what we enjoy? High school classes are nowhere near informative enough about all the different careers out there. High school counselors brush you off with a brochure because they have 500 other students to deal with. When some people would tell me what their major was, I literally had never even heard of some of them and they only knew because it was something their parents did or had told them about.

Choosing the path your life will take at 17 years old is scary. Sometimes we guess right and end up doing something we truly love. What about the kids who don't? What about the ones who take 6 years to graduate college and rack up thousands of dollars in debt because they changed their major 3 times? What about the ones who chose something they thought they would enjoy only to graduate with a degree and find out the field isn't for them?

In my opinion, high schools need to do a better job of informing us of everything that is out there. I had no idea how much schooling it required to get a Psy D or law degree. I didn't know that getting my degree in the strategic communication side of journalism would better help me get a job when I graduated because reporting journalism is dying.

The amount of us who come into college without a real clue of what is out there is scary and wrong. We depend on high school to inform us and mold us into intelligent enough students to decide, but many of them are failing to do that. What are you supposed to do in 10 years when getting up every day to go to a job you hate becomes a chore? That, to me, is the scariest thing out there.