Growing up, there was always the question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
I was never that child that said an astronaut or the president; I truthfully had no idea and, ten years later, I still have no idea. The question of, "What do you want to be when you get out of college?" has been asked more recently then ever before– and rightfully so. I will begin my freshman year of college in the fall. People keep asking, “Well? What do you want to be? What are your interests?” I never thought it would be so hard to figure that out.
Whether or not people are aware of it, asking a college student, or an upcoming college student, what they want to be when they get out of college is very stressful. Even colleges seem to expect you to know what type of degree you want during your freshman orientation. As students, all we have known our entire lives is school, school, and more school; suddenly, you have people expecting you to know what you want to be for the rest of your life. It’s a very scary feeling when you have people telling you all sorts of things like what kind of degree not to get and, if you want that degree, what awful classes you have to take. I know people mean well, but sometimes it’s better to offer words of encouragement than to disclose all the scary details.
On the other side, there are these people that have always known exactly what they want to do, and they can’t wait to get started working toward their dream job– and that’s great! Something I personally have just recently learned is its okay to not know exactly what you want to do with your life. That means you have many more opportunities to explore who you are and what you find interesting. That’s what college is supposed to be about, right? It's for figuring out what you enjoy. When people ask me what I want to be, all I can tell them is I want to inspire people to be who they are, to embrace their talent and to share their talents with the world. God gave each of us a talent for a reason, and we shouldn’t hide who we are or what we can do from the rest of the world. We should try to help people with our abilities. Sometimes, even saying that doesn’t seem to help.
I feel as a society we have put too much pressure on high school graduates to basically have our lives planned out. That is definitely not the case. Most of us barely have tomorrow planned out– let alone the rest of our lives.
College can be seen as a scary, but exciting beginning to discover who we are and what our goals consist of. That’s what college is about: figuring out what you want to be. To all the fellow high school graduates that have no idea what you want to be: embrace it.
College is your time to soak up every experience you can; eventually, you will figure out what you want to be when you grow up.
