“The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.” Ben Stein
Your name, your classification, and your major: these are the three things everyone wants to know the first few weeks of school. Sometimes, the first one even gets lost in the mix. Everyone starts trying to put you into classes and clubs to help you fit into this box and get you on the path to success. As if starting college isn’t overwhelming enough, you begin to realize that that thing you’ve been saying you want to be since you were five is actually going to happen. It has requirements and course hours and projects, and you see that list of classes and you’re suddenly so unsure of something you knew like the back of your hand. Here’s a little secret it’s taken me a year to learn: it is ok.
I was the girl with the 25 year plan with all the details worked out down to what my children would be named and what color the picket fence in front of my house was going to be painted. I had it all together and figured out like every high school student dreams of. People tried to tell me I would change my mind, things wouldn’t work out the way I had planned, but I wouldn’t listen. I was determined to live out my plan perfectly. I was wrong.
It isn’t that my plan was wrong, or that it was flawed, my plan was fine. It just didn’t account for one very important detail: people change. I changed. I don’t want the same things that I wanted when I was a freshman in high school, and you probably don’t either. I have grown and learned and realized that there is a huge world out there I want to explore. I don’t want a house with a picket fence anymore; I want a passport and a notebook. That sounds fine and great now, but at the time it wasn’t. Realizing that my obsessively detailed, one hundred step plan for ultimate success in life wasn’t what I actually wanted anymore was nothing short of terrifying. It was like looking up in the supermarket and realizing the woman you’ve been walking with isn’t actually your mother, only worse because now you’re questioning whether or not you even have a mother. What do you do when you make a life-altering realization such as, “I’m growing up and I don’t know what I want to be?"
1. Don’t panic.
Very rarely will panic be the correct answer. It will be tempting, yes, but short of the sky literally falling, panicking will not improve anything. In fact, it probably wouldn’t be helpful in that situation either. Believe me, I understand that not knowing is not a fun feeling, but it is also not the end of the world. Uncertainty about your life will not cause it to stop. If anything, being uncertain is all the more reason to keep going. Just stay calm, and keep moving.
2. Ignore everyone else.
Ignoring people is usually not the correct answer in most situations either, but it is in this one and here is why: people will try to put you in boxes. People will try to tell you what you should, need to, want to, would be good at all day long of every single day, but you cannot listen to them. Take their advice with a grain of salt, consider their personal opinion, but do not base your decisions off of them. You cannot live for other people. You cannot make decisions to make other people happy. At the beginning and end of every day, you have to answer to yourself. Making other people happy will only get you so far, and it cannot compare to the inner-peace you will feel when you know what you’re doing is making you happy. Block out all the noise around you and ask yourself, “What do I want to do? Who do I want to be? What is important to me?”
3. Fight for it.
Once you’ve answered those three questions, get up and do it. There will be obstacles, but do not let those doubts and those obstacles stop you from pursuing what you want. Great stories do not start from easy beginnings. Every hero, every person worth aspiring to be, had to at some point grit their teeth and push through. All those people that you chose to ignore will try to change your mind. They will continue to tell you what you should, need to, want to, would be good at, but if you pursue your dreams those voices will eventually be blocked out by the voice inside you saying, “This is what I want.” There will be nay-sayers and even you will doubt yourself at times, but trust me when I say the feeling of embracing who you are and fighting to be that is worth those times of struggle.
What if, though, after all of that you have another one of those moments where you realize you were wrong? What if you (heaven forbid!) change again over the next forty years of your life and decide you don’t want the same things you wanted when you were in college? That is when you see Step 1. I don’t know who is responsible for the idea that you have to pick one career and do that thing for the rest of your life, but I would personally like to write them a very strongly worded letter of disapproval. YOU ARE ALLOWED TO CHANGE. You do not have to want the same things at 14 and 24 and 40 and 84. If you do, you may need to seek professional help. You should change as you learn and as you grow as a human being. Do not let these first few weeks of college scare you into declaring a major. Take time with your basics, explore career options, take electives, join clubs, and do not ever be afraid to say the words, “I do not know.” You are allowed to not know. You are also allowed to change your mind. Who you are is more important than where you are, and where you are now is more important than where you will be someday.
