I’ve spent my years in school wanting to be, quite literally, a hundred different things. I didn’t have a love for just one subject, I had a love for learning in general. I entered all of my classes each day excited for the chance at learning something new. I adored writing just as much as I reveled chemistry, biology just as much as history, algebra just as much as art.

It was an amazing sort of feeling, that’s for certain, to walk into the lunch room surrounded by a hundred of my classmates all complaining about how boring their third period math class was, or how tedious English had grown to be, while I was rejoicing in all the new bits of knowledge I’d attained throughout the day. Not that I was a prodigy or anything, there were some classes I was worse than average, some I was better than average, but every last one of them I genuinely enjoyed.

I thought I was lucky, or special or something to not have any subjects I didn’t like, but boy, was I wrong.

Because, while I was there liking everything, my classmates were simultaneously ruling things out, which (at the time) seemed exponentially more important. By the time senior year rolled around and everyone was heading off to their respective Universities, their majors declared, carrying pamphlets of class recommendations and already making friends with people they’d be sitting in classes with for the next four years, I was being sucked into the black hole that was Undecided (Yes, it has to be that dramatic, it’s who I am. I was into theater, too, did I mention?).

It was beyond terrifying, at first, facing that decision. My Sophie’s Choice, picking just one out of the various subjects that had quickly become a part of me. In my mind, the ones I ruled out would be lost to me forever, and those hobbies that’d always been a highlight to my life would suddenly disappear and I’d no longer be the same person.

However, I’m here to tell you that that’s not true. Liking a large array of subjects, being able to see yourself in a hundred different careers, is not a curse. It may seem daunting, having so many choices, but I promise you there’s a silver lining. Not only does it mean you can be anything from a marine biologist to a professional writer, but it also means you will forever have something to fall back on. If one career path falls through, for whatever reason, you can always go back to one of those trusty ideas you had when you were 15.

And the “rejects”, per say, don’t just disappear. Especially with the internet, it’s so much easier to participate in hobbies that otherwise would be impossible. If I decide to be a kindergarten teacher, I can still do crazy chemistry experiments on the weekend in my kitchen (with proper protective gear, of course, and the help of the interwebs to tell me how not to blow my house up). It’s never over, and something that’s a part of you can’t just disappear from your mind, and life, overnight. It’s there, even if it’s hiding in the background, to influence your thinking and decisions for however long you want it to.

So, it’s okay to take a semester off (I know I definitely needed it), or even a year break before heading straight to college, just to figure things out. Take some time, think things out, get a job doing something you know you like, to see if it’s something you could do everyday. And, remember, it’s alright to have a hundred dreams. It just means you’ll always have something to look forward to.