Recently, I’ve realized something pretty cool.

As difficult as college is, and as crazy as it drives me at times, I love what I am doing. I love studying what I am studying. I love the classes I get to take. I love the things I get to read, the assignments I’m “forced” to write, the professors and the classmates that I encounter.

Sure, there are certain projects I don’t really want to do, and certain classes give me a lot of anxiety, but at the end of the day, I love that I can actually feel myself learning and growing because of them.

I’m really lucky because I have the freedom to choose whatever studies I want. I’m aware of that. I’m also aware that not everyone has the opportunity or the liberty to do so. But the more I realize how happy I am with the things I am studying, the more I realize that this is what college should be about. And I know I am privileged in being able to say that.

There’s a saying, or something of the sort, that some people work to live and some people live to work. I’m only 20 years old and I really have zero authority to be making large statements, but I’m going to go ahead and say that I really don’t believe life is about working. You weren’t made solely for the purpose of getting something done and then calling it quits at the end of your life.

You were made to enjoy life. To work for goodness on this earth, yes, but to enjoy doing it.

I can’t tell you the number of people on my campus who express an extreme dislike for the path they are on. There are a lot of people who simply don’t enjoy their major, who look towards their future with disdain, who don’t put in the work because the work is something they loathe.

Alright. We are in college to create a better future for ourselves and for the world we live in. So tell me how you hating what you are doing is going to do for your future as a human being? Are we really meant to go to college to get a degree in something we don’t feel we are meant to do?

It brings me a lot of sadness when people hate what they’re doing, because life is about a lot more than just working and making money and getting on with it. Our college degrees should reflect four years of studying things we deeply love or are at least deeply interested in, because that’s what the world needs from us— passion. The world doesn’t need mediocrity and apathy. There is enough of that.

We need a generation that is alive with the magic of living and that understands that we have the power to change the world. Things don’t have to be grey— the future doesn’t have to look boring and bleak. And I do see so much goodness in the generation around me, a generation that is done with injustice, that is done with being told who to be, that sees a brighter horizon and that works to bask in that light.

But I still see it, you know, in classmates around me who just don’t care about a whole lot. I just hope people know that the future is what we make it, and that it doesn’t have to turn out a certain type of way.

We can make things different.

We can follow paths that aren’t placed there for us.

We can make them ourselves.

It’s about what we were put here on this earth to do, what we were meant to do. I refuse to believe for a single second that there’s a single human being on this earth who doesn’t have a beautiful purpose and destiny. Don’t you feel it inside of yourself? That you were meant for something wonderful?

Let’s be bold, let’s be brave, let’s be incredibly human. Let’s create!