Last weekend, I went to a family barbecue where I engaged in the following conversation about a dozen times:
“What year are you in school?”
Senior.
“Where do you go again?”
Colgate University, in upstate New York.
“What are you studying?”
Math.
“What are you gonna do with that?”
Pause. I cringed every time I heard those words, even though I knew it was the inevitable next question in the conversation. I would have almost preferred the classic “Any cute boys? Do you have a boyfriend? Are you seeing anyone?” interrogation, because at least then those answers would be straightforward.
Sometimes I said that I was taking a gap year before going to medical school. Other times I said I was going to grad school for applied math and statistics. I told some I was considering Columbia’s public health program. I needed to switch it up to keep myself entertained. But what I really wanted to say was “I have no idea,” and let the conversation die.
Little did I know that my parents overheard all of my contrasting responses, and long story short - they were concerned.
They’ve always known me as the girl with the confident answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” In first grade, it was an author, illustrator, and artist. In sixth grade, it was a lawyer. And since I was fourteen, I’ve wanted to be a neurologist. But not anymore. It’s out of character, and it’s scary.
I never thought I would be one of those people who would change their minds in college. But thanks to the liberal arts education I received, I did. As the major declaration deadline approached, I was constantly having meetings with professors and advisors to figure out what I should do. With days to spare, I made a snap decision and declared myself a math major. I decided to sacrifice my grades for something I loved. Despite late nights and early mornings studying in Cooley library only to barely pass three-hour exams (with a curve), I never regretted changing my major.
Everyone always says that’s what college is all about: trying new things, experimenting, changing your mind, figuring it out. Well, when it’s the summer before your senior year and all of a sudden you find yourself serially logging onto Linkedin and naviGATE more than you log into Facebook, and you realize in ten quick months you’ll be graduating and you don’t nearly have your life together - take a deep breath, and cue a quarter life crisis.
My uncertainty about the future, my unwillingness to discuss it, and my inability to deal with it, fueled my parents’ worry. Neuroscience and medical school were things I always wanted. They couldn’t understand the sudden change. They don’t want me to settle, or sell myself short. I have opportunities, resources, and a support system that they never had, and they don’t want me to throw them away, or have regrets ten or twenty years down the line, or take a job for the sake of taking a job and get stuck in it and be miserable. This fear stems from their own lives; besides, every parent wants better for their kids.
I’m not trying to take the easy way out, because nothing I do is easy. It’s not that I don’t like neuroscience anymore, I just like it less. And it’s not that I’m completely abandoning medical school, it’s just not as high on my radar. My future path was once a straight line, and now it's a jumbled scribble. Blame liberal arts, for exposing me to subjects I never thought I’d have an interest in. The intro to computer science class I took last semester was one of the coolest classes I’ve ever taken, and I wish I had discovered it earlier because now it’s too late to take more compsci classes and I think programming would make an awesome career. I’m having the opposite problem of someone with an obscure major who won’t be able to find a job at all; there’s so much I can do with a liberal arts degree in mathematics, and I don’t know how to narrow down my options. Everything sounds interesting, and I want to try it all.
Those same people who say it’s okay to change your mind in college also say that you still have time to decide. But it feels like time is running out. In six weeks we’ll be back at school, and soon after that classes will start, and I’ll get busy and I won’t have the time to search for gap year opportunities or post-bac programs or study for the GRE or the MCAT or habitually scroll through Linkedin.
It might not seem like it, but “those people” are right. Although trying at times, college is familiar and comfortable; life after graduation - the real world - is unknown territory. But life’s a marathon, and not a sprint. It’s okay if it takes a little longer to figure it out. After a decade-long career in finance, my aunt went back to school to become a nurse. If you think you’re the only one flipping a coin to determine whether or not you should drop everything and start a company in the Valley or play it safe(r) and work in investment banking, you’re definitely not alone. Everything has a way of working itself out in the end, and you always end up where you’re supposed to be eventually.
