When we are little kids, we dream about what we want to be when we grow up. A doctor, a lawyer or like my older brother when he was a child, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. When we plan for college, we are supposed to know what we will major in: pre-med, communication, business. In college, you soon find out there is a routine to follow for the next four years: full-time student, part-time job, internship and volunteer hours. We plan to stay on one track until we graduate. But what happens when we realize the major we chose when we were 18-years-old isn’t the path for the degree our passion lies in? Of course, this situation calls for an easy fix – change your major. But this is a domino effect; changing your major is no easy course of action. You change you major, and you have multiple courses you took that are no longer useful for the new major you choose. Changing your major could mean adding a semester or even years, to your college education. Do you know how much money that is? What happened to staying on the path? I can feel the anxiety boiling already.
What do you do when you stray away from the path? What can you do? You can fill your head with anxiety and stress, or you can relax and ride the waves. This is a piece of advice every student should understand: this path is not the path. You create your own path. Some students take a gap year, and that gap year could be for traveling the world or making enough money to support yourself financially during college. Some students graduate in four years, but others do it in five or six. Other students drop out completely, get on with their lives and never look back. Each path is fine because it’s the path they chose. It is not the path someone else chose for them.
Too often, I find myself stressing about my path in life. What if I don’t finish undergrad in four years? Should I go to graduate school? Do I have enough experience through internships and jobs to find a career that suits me? Will my parents be proud of me? I have to keep reminding myself that these are all hypothetical questions about my future. I need to focus on all the things I’m accomplishing in the present. If I’m making staight-A's, then why am I worried about having to take another semester? If I have multiple internships under my belt, then why am I worried about not having enough? I also have to keep telling myself that whatever happens, happens. Qué será, será. My path isn’t what makes my parents happy, but what suits me best. My path is not entirely up to me, but it is a combination of the decisions I have made. I can fight the path I have created by fate or on purpose, or I can accept it and grow as I make more decisions to create a better path fit for me
