My parents tell me a familiar story often, about how, in their era (which was evidently before dinosaurs roamed the planet), they basically had two major choices — if you were someone who wanted to be anyone in the world, you either opted for Science or Business; there were the Arts people too, but only the kids who couldn’t pass class ended up in that category.

I think that’s why it’s so important to my parents that they give us free reign over our major choices. I love that they’ve always pushed me to go after my dreams, but for my first year in college, as a girl that was born on a seesaw, sometimes I wished that they’d pushed me into something so that I would never have to make the decision myself.

I think it’s silly when people ask kids what they want to be when they grow up and then laugh at the childrens’ ideas. Yesterday, after dinner, when my cousin stated he wanted to be a detective, everyone thought it was the funniest joke in the world —the fact that it was a boy about to enter his first year of high school rather than an elementary kid apparently made the joke doubly ludicrous.

If we really want to encourage dreams, we need to take them seriously. I was fortunate enough that my parents hid their disappointment that I wasn’t going to become a doctor well and responded amenably enough to my becoming a teacher, even calling out other family members who were convinced I was making the worst decision of my life.

The thing is, when I started college, I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I said I wanted to teach but I guess I would have been about as interested at that point in studying economics or political science or maybe even biology. What did I know of the real world? I only knew that engineers liked math, yet I’d never seen an engineer in action; I knew bio kids were destined to become pre-med students but what did that really mean?

The first couple of semesters of college were my trial and error phases where I went to advisors from every college and flip-flopped back and forth between ideas – one day, I was determined to become a principal, the next, I decided psychology seemed reasonably fascinating.

It is never an easy choice and in the end, it’s never guaranteed that it’s the right one. I’m student teaching now and while I love my kids and the job and am grateful for everything that has driven me on my path, I have no way of saying that I’ll be completely satisfied ten years later, that I’ll still consider teaching my dream job.

Life changes, we change, but the choice to make our own decisions is something we should all value and something that no one should ever demean us for or pressure us about. Maybe we don’t know the answer to that question, the burning, “What do I want to do with my life” but even the path to finding out is life’s own guide to self-discovery — and, at least, we mold our own lives this way.