You know what’s strange? College and society as a whole asks eighteen year old kids to choose the career for their future, a career that they will potentially hold for the rest of their lives. I’d like to thank eighteen year old Ella for picking her first major so that I could find out that it is really not what I wanted to do. My first major was computer science, it was practical but I was bad at it. After exploring other options, I ultimately missed technology. About two years later, twenty year old Ella decided that technology was the career.
Career. In just over a month I’m expected to have a career. Leading up to this year, I knew what I wanted, I wanted my masters in Human Computer Design and Engineering, I wanted to move to California, I wanted a whole different lifestyle. Do I still want to move out to California? Hell yeah. The difference is now I think that there are other things that are more important. I have the rest of my life to make a move.
I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing but what I do know is that I want to be happy. Personally, my being happy is so much more important than money or material things or anything else. To be happy, I don’t think I can sit behind a desk all day nor do I think I can work a nine to five job. In comparing productivity of employers that don’t require their employees to work nine to five to companies that do, the productivity of the people who actually get to enjoy their lives and not spend eight miserable hours a week in an office is off the charts. What society needs is to take a good hard look at the people slaving away day in and day out so focused on what material things can do for them and address needs directly related to what can change someone’s life outside of these material things. Happiness should be easy so why are we having such a hard time finding it. Look around, look at the stars, love the people around you. I need the outdoors, I need people I love, and I need freedom to learn and grow to be creative. Right now what I have lined up is some freelance work and a steady job at a golf course where I have been for five years.
This shift really didn’t come easy to me at first but when I stepped outside of this box that is North Central, the box that is our parents expectations, I am able to live fuller. I travel. I love traveling and learning that school and grades isn’t everything have allowed me to do this. So where are you gonna go? Take a long weekend in Los Angeles? Maybe something more local like Grand Rapids? You’re going somewhere whether it is a physical place or a long term career, just don’t regret anything, take the trip and don’t forget to get lost along the way.
I can’t personally tell you where I’m going but I can tell you who I am along my way to getting there. I am a soon to be college graduate with an Interactive Media Studies: Technology major with a double minor in Computer Science and English Writing. I am a student. I am a musician. I am an employee at a golf course. I am an avid lover and consumer of pizza. I am a feminist. I am a girl in love. I am a believer in equal right for all. I am an adventurer. I am a creative. I am going somewhere.
