We can all relate to those grueling conversations with extended family. Conversations that center around your future, your time, your 'plans.' We always know that they're just asking because they genuinely care, but it always seems to result in a feeling of interrogation and avoidance. Because, no matter how many 'plans' we have, or what we say we're going, us kids under age 30 seem to have no idea what we're doing.
I am four months away from graduating from my dream school. I am immensely lucky, and so blessed. Looking back now, however, I see all the opportunities I did not take, and I realize I could have learned so much more. I am prepared for the business world, but I don't know exactly which business world I belong in.
I attend Berklee College of Music, a leading school in the future of the entertainment industry. Arguably, Berklee is the most prestigious contemporary music school in the world. I study a mix of everything, but my focus is business, weirdly enough. I started out at a school geared towards performance, but after telling all my family members for months that I was training to be a professional artist, I did a complete 180 and decided to switch my focus to business. I am leaving Berklee a completely different person than I was when I began my studies.
See, when we young adults finally get to college, we have no idea who we are, or what we want. Even though we think we do. Some of us seem to think that we know everything there is to know about ourselves. Some freshmen have even already chosen a major- at age eighteen. Suddenly, we're terrified to discover that a person goes through an immense amount of development during their college years. Plans, dreams, and people change, and the result is this feeling directly before graduation - what the hell am I going to do with my life? We go to college expecting just to learn as much as we can, and better the person we already are, and we actually completely change who that person is. We seem to be leaving our various institutions with more confusion than anything else.
This past week, I attended a trip to Silicon Valley, lead by BerkleeICE, to see all the startup companies and venture capital firms and sound design offices that dominate our corporate world. I was shocked, not only at how many executive team leaders would meet with us, but how many of those executives were Berklee Graduates. An entire world was opened up for me, a world where I don't have to just do music. I can work hard and someday become a team leader at Google X, or write music for video games or create a startup company that changes the world. As private and exclusive Berklee is, the skills which we in our time here do not only apply to the music industry.
So I'm being told to change all of my philosophies, step out of my comfort zone, do the exact opposite of what I would normally do. As tempting as that sounds, I have a whole life centered around Boston now; I've put down my roots, I've made so many amazing connections. I see myself either staying in one place for the next few years, or hopping in a van and driving cross country, just for the hell of it. There is no in-between. Professional entrepreneur or hula-hoop nomad? Those seem to be my choices, both of which are completely out of my comfort zone, because my comfort zone is here, in school. As ready as I am to become a real person, I have only known academia for the last 16 years.
So I'm figuring it all out. I have so many amazing options and resources in front of me, and no idea which path to choose. While a small part of me is envious of the students who have chosen a path, I am so much more excited to have so much more space to grow, and learn, and fail. The most important developments for me came from the unexplained, and unexplored.
Because isn't there more risk in the unknown, than in the already discovered?
