I have decided, with very little doubt in my mind, that deciding what I’m going to study in college will be the hardest decision I will ever make in my entire life. Peeta or Gale? Peeta, obviously. Black Dahlia or JonBenét Ramsey? I need to know what happened to JonBenét. 30 years from now, do I pull the plug on my mother or let her live the rest of her life naturally? Sorry, Mom. Despite my concrete answers on some of the world's hardest questions, I for the life of me cannot decide what I want to do until my dying days. My way of thinking may seem dramatic, but nobody warned me about the prolonged stressful process that is choosing a major. For me, the choice has always been between two polar opposites: law or creative writing. Do I go with a relatively safe option that may or may not get me a solid, but morally ambiguous, job? Or do I go with something that makes me happy but would be deemed a worthless degree to future employers? If boiled down, all a college education physically gives you is a piece of paper and a beer gut, so what’s the point in going in the first place? I know that I’m not alone in this seemingly eternal struggle; almost all of my friends have settled for a safe major instead of following their passions, except for the ones who actually want to be an engineer. I’ve always been told that college is the time where people find themselves, but it seems like the way that college is structured only works for the people who have already found themselves.
Law has always been an adequate safe option for me because it’s such a catch-all term for the more “professional” (read: useful) areas of study that I’m interested in. I could go into politics and be surrounded by a gaggle of melted Ken-doll lookalikes like one Marco Rubio, but I’ve watched House of Cards and I’m not sure if I could have that many affairs. I could study Criminology and most definitely be surrounded by future serial killers. I could just study law and become a defense attorney, but my moral compass isn’t that jacked up and I enjoy sleeping at night.
Ever since the seventh grade, I’ve always been completely enamored by true crime. To put it plainly, I’ve been obsessed with studying serial killers for roughly a third of my life. My obsession could quite possibly be the reason why I’m so emotionally stunted, but my obsession has also made me realize a profession under the law umbrella that I would actually enjoy: Homicide Detective. In my small town of Maitland, FL, the average starting salary is a little over $83,000 a year, and I’d be able to study and be around serial killers and their accomplices – every little girls’ dream. I reference their accomplices specifically because it’s absolutely mind-boggling to me how Dean Corll could find four separate people to aid him in murdering 27 young boys, but I can’t get a match on Tinder. I’ve realized, though, that even though I’ve seen a lot of pictures of mutilated bodies (I swear I’m not a masochist), seeing pictures of a dead body is very different than actually seeing a dead body in real life. With this, I’m stuck with sacrificing my sanity for a good paycheck, which is something I’m not 100% sure I’m willing to compromise. Maybe my dream of solving the JonBenét Ramsay case will have to stay a dream.
On the flip side, creative writing is a safe major in the sense that I probably won’t get murdered while doing it and it’s less emotionally scarring. However, I have considerably less choices with a degree in creative writing: I can either be a self-published author, as it’s notoriously difficult to be published through an actual publisher, or be the cashier at Whole Foods who likes to tell everyone that I have a degree in creative writing. I’ve realized, though, that I don’t hate myself enough to get a degree in creative writing, as it’s one of the most useless degrees – right after philosophy or anthropology (sorry to anyone who’s a philosophy or anthropology major, but I’m also not sorry at all). It’s hard to get a median salary for being a writer because authors like Stephen King, J.K Rowling, and John Green tend to mess up the numbers. I’d never get a degree in creative writing because, honestly, what are the chances that I become the next John Green? What are the chances that my hyper-romanticized novels creating nonsensical relationships only to rip them away in order to capitalize on a human’s most animalistic impulses will one day be created into movies for girls to drag their boyfriends to and then try to mold them into this sub-human category of the “perfect boyfriend”? Honestly, the thought of stooping so low to write teeny-bopper romance novels makes me want to vomit. Besides, John Green was already rich and famous from his YouTube channel before his first novel was published in 2008. In fact, if it wasn’t for the fact that he garnered such a large internet following in 2007, Looking for Alaska and all of his subsequent novels wouldn’t have been nearly as popular. But, I’d be happy as a writer, right? I wouldn’t have any money, I wouldn’t be able to get a job because who wants to hire someone for an office job when they have a degree in creative writing, and I’d feel like a loser compared to my friends, but I’d be happy if I was a writer since I love to write, right?
What if one day I realize that I actually don’t like writing and only believed that I did because that’s what people always told me I was good at? What if one day I realize that I’m actually not good at writing at all so I’ve wasted 40 years and thousands of dollars on something that I’m not even good at? Hypothetically, what if one day I realize this in my New York apartment – that’s so small it should only be considered a closet – and decide that I have no choice but to just end it all? “But,” I’d ration with myself, “I can’t just end it all. Who would water my pet cactus?” When did I start being the type of person who owned a pet cactus?
What’s the point of college at all? If I was honest, my dream job would be being paid a lot of money to do absolutely nothing. If I could, I’d have a sugar daddy that I didn’t have to do anything weird with; I’d just high-five him then he’d hand me $5,000 entirely in 20’s and we’d do this every week for the rest of his life. I’d somehow managed to snake my way into his will as the Woman He High-Fived Every Week and continue milking my cash cow until I eventually bit the dust. There’s no college degree that would get me that job – at least I hope there isn’t for ethical reasons. If the point of college is to eventually get a job that you love, pays a lot, and isn’t scarring in any way, then why should I go? Maybe it’s because I know that my dog can’t be my only friend for the rest of my life. Even though I’d insist I hate it till my dying days in order to look cool in front of my peers, maybe I honestly enjoy learning new things. Maybe I realize that the chances of me finding a man who would pay me a lot of money just to high five him is a lot slimmer than me becoming the next John Green. I look around at my friends who’ve settled for realistic degrees, and even though they’re not at their peaks of happiness, they’re exceling in their fields. Why are young adults these days so okay with giving up their dreams?
This article ended up raising a lot more questions than answering them. Though I still don’t know what I’m going to major in, or if there’s even a point to me being in college. I don’t know if four years from now I’ll end up finding my way and figuring out how to balance my happiness and wealth in a college degree. I don’t know if I’ll end up finding success on my way to getting a degree and end up dropping out. I don’t know if I’ll ever end up getting my shit together. In a perfect world, I’d tell you to follow your heart and study your passion and forget about things like bills and obligations, but this isn’t a perfect world. I feel as if my struggle with choosing my major will follow me for the rest of my life, like a shadow of missed opportunities and a weakened cash flow. Obviously, I don’t know a lot of things – calculus, why men have nipples, the point of me going to college. However, I do know that I’m not alone in my seemingly eternal struggle of passion versus paycheck. I do know, however, that one day I’ll find a balance between the two whether the solution takes a few years to surface itself or it hits me right in the face one day. And, I do know that one of these days, I’ll be happy with my choice. I’ll make sure of it.
