College is a time in your life when you’re supposed to find your calling. Apparently it is within the ages of 18-23 that we are not only supposed to find our passion, but also take classes on how to perfect it, with a spotless GPA to match. Your passion could be teaching, medical science, law, or some kind of business degree. With these degrees you are close to guaranteed a job. However, say if you were interested in writing, fashion, art, or philosophy. With these passions you are faced with a choice. Do you go for it, in hope that you could become successful in these low-demand careers? Or do play it safe and go for a job you’ll never care for but are guaranteed. It is with this choice you are choosing what it is truly important to your future. Do you want money and a comfortable living? Or do you want to continuously live on the edge, maybe being strung along from job to job, but at the same time loving the pursuit of your passion?
A friend of mine was describing a boy who wants to start a relationship with her the other day. This girl is one of my dearest friends, and she and I share many similarities. “He said he’d be okay with being broke and playing music for the rest of his life, rather than doing something he hates and making a comfortable living. After he told me that I realized we’d never work,” my best friend explained. At first I completely agreed with her. See, I have always put the thought of a family before my career, and therefore picked a career that combined something I liked but would also make good money. However, after years of dragging myself to class, and making myself study things I don’t care to learn, I have begun to wonder. Although my passion for a family lingers, so does the thought of being unhappy every day at a job I don’t completely love. Is this boy my friend is writing off noble for taking a chance at his dream? Or is he stupid for the possibility of not making it in this money-is-everything world we live in?
The concept has start to weigh on me and I have begun to consider if this stuff I’m learning should be enjoyable to me. What if the major I declared sounded good when I was 17 and now at 21, after growing through independence, sounds dreadful? Should I plow through, badgering my brain to get through another class about cell respiration and phagocytosis? Or should I take a chance, waste tons of money in school loans, delay my first real job, and change my major all for the chance to maybe make it? This is the choice, I, like thousands of other students around the country are being forced to make.
So I guess my question is what choice is right? I know if I asked my dad what to do his face would get red, and he would try to hide his disappointment. “But Hope who knows if you could make it as a writer? Who knows if your book or article or short story would be important to other people? With a medical degree you are sure to make money, and sure to be admired,” he would think and mutter under his breath. So I guess I’ll leave you with this, what is more important to your life? Money or passion? Or are you one of those rare people who find a career that combines both? Because as I sit here typing this scramble of thoughts, avoiding my anatomy homework, I can’t help but question. Have I lost my passion to money?
