Deciding what you want to study for the next four years is hard. Deciding what you want to do with that for (theoretically) the rest of your life is also hard-- especially when you’re 19 or 20 years old.

You pick a major, choose your classes, and spend hours and hours working on projects, papers, and assignments. It’s the end of the semester, and do you ever feel like you might have made the wrong choice?

Making the wrong choice is terrifying to me. Staying in one place for the rest of my life, working a job I hate, all because I chose the wrong thing—it’s irrational, but still top of the fear-list.

With finals staring us in the face, the work-load, stress-load, and laundry-loads are starting to pile up. It’s easy to forget why you’re doing all of this. It’s even easier to forget why you want to do all of this. Shouldn’t we be pursing something we enjoy?

I want to think that we aren’t ever stuck. That if we ever decide this isn’t the path for us, we can drop it and do something else. Especially now, at this stage in our lives when there are so many possibilities around us. We’re still ahead of the game.

If you hate everything about what you’re doing right now, then why keep going? Can’t you take a break, try something new, do what you really want to do instead of what you think is a good idea? Not everyone has the liberty and freedom to take a 180, but many of us do. It's not easy, but it's also not impossible. I want to think that I’ll still believe that even when I’m no longer 20 and optimistic.

I hope you find something you love, and if you realize it’s not for you, I hope you have the irrational motivations to start all over again.