Since I was a senior in high school, everyone would always ask me what I wanted to do with my life. 'What do you want to study in college?', 'What kind of job do you want to have when you graduate?', 'Where do you want to live after college?'. I never knew what to say because quite honestly, I had absolutely no idea. I had some ideas of things I was interested in and some places I wanted to live or at least visit, but I was never sure of what I wanted. I felt lost; especially because all of my friends in high school knew exactly what they wanted to do.

I entered my freshman year undecided and took the GenEd classes that are required for every student, but by the middle of the spring semester, I still felt lost and unsure of what I wanted to study. I would change my mind every day between three or four different majors or careers I could see myself going into. I spoke with three different advisors, my parents, my brothers and my friends, but I still couldn't figure it out. I had always had a love for art and design so I figured why not try that out. So at the end of my freshman year, I declared Architectural Design as my major and felt confident that that was what I wanted to do.

As it turns out, I hated the program after just one semester. I didn't hate design, but the program just wasn't what I was looking for. So here I was back to square one, not knowing what I wanted to do. Since I had first visited JMU my senior year of high school, I had been interested in their SMAD program. I loved writing and journalism and their program just seemed to combine that with other media outlets and design elements. I applied to the program, waited anxiously for months, and then found out one morning that I was accepted. It was a relief since I was approaching the end of my sophomore year. I am an upcoming junior now and am still in the SMAD program. I took two intro classes over the summer semester at JMU and, while it was a lot of work in a little amount of time, I finally felt like this was what I wanted to do, and I was actually enjoying what I was learning.

But this past week when I was playing in a golf outing with my dad and friends, I found myself sitting at this table at dinner with some hoity-toity Manhattan renovator who could not stop talking about himself (but that's beside the point). He asked me where I went to school and what I was studying and I told him JMU and journalism. He asked me what I wanted to do with that when I graduated and I said I wasn't sure. He then proceeded to go on and on about how I'll be stuck in a job for at least 10 years that I am going to hate before I can even make a name for myself because journalism is a dying field, and unless I had something special about me like famous broadcasters, then I was going to have a rough time. Keep in mind I had never met this guy before in my life, he is not in the journalism or broadcast field at all and he was sitting there telling me how my future is going to be.

So this is for anyone who feels like they are in the same position as me. You are not alone. It is absolutely 100 percent fine to not know what you want to study in college. It is fine to not know what you want to do after you graduate. And it is fine to just go with the flow and see where life takes you. There are going to be people around you that know exactly what they want to do and that is fine too, but do not let that bring you down in any way and certainly do not let anyone put you down because you are unsure. Life has this crazy way of always leading you to the right place - even if it takes you the long way. Life is taking me to London in the fall and I can't wait to see what else is in store for my future.

So thank you Mr. Manhattan Renovator, for trying to tell me how miserable I am going to be in my future and that I won't be able to make a name for myself. If there is one thing that I did take out of that conversation, it's that I certainly do not want to surround myself with people like you.