If You're Questioning The Path You're On, Read This
What college taught me about dreams.
As I look back on my senior year, I faintly remember those stressful four years (and for some kids, even longer) prepping for colleges to love want me. We all heard it time and time again from the important people in our lives: parents, coaches, guidance counselors, that fake uncle, "be well-rounded, be competitive in all of your math and sciences." Or at least that's how most of us interpreted it. But all that was a bunch of fake news.
When people hear I went almost three years of being a Computer Science and Statistics gal — working with startups and stacking my resume with a Bloomberg Certification and more programming languages and projects than I'd care to remember — only to dip last minute for a piece of paper saying Communications and PR, they think I'm batsh*t.
And you know what? Those people and my dad are right.
The truth is, my story isn't an unfamiliar one. I feel our generation has come to realize in today's entrepreneurial, Instagram-as-a-career world, that what you major in has become officially irrelevant to your future. And yet it was only four years ago that I watched hundreds of kids I knew immediately jump on the bandwagon of computer science or finance after learning of their salaries, or if you just watched "Wolf of Wallstreet" (Jordan Belfort also went to my old college).
And it was only six months into work at some of the most grandiose companies postgrad that I watched a domino chain of my brother's friends release lengthy, disheartened LinkedIn posts, preaching that the lucrative, shiny dream cloud of these romanticized, high-caliber jobs was, in fact, a soul-crushing mousetrap.
A lot of us can put enough work and effort to be good and employable at anything, but many of us jump at that freedom of choice to an idea of what we would like to be, without paying attention to who we are. And it is completely understandable: there is so much to desire about the ability to rebrand yourself or repair family perceptions of you with an impressive college degree or maybe even just satisfy the pressures of being conceived by high-achievers.
Needless to say, I received a lot of family backlash when I declared my major, including a lot of lip from my brother, which took the form of some creatively disparaging iMessages. But the underlying honest message was loud and reverberating: "You're a writer, not a STEM girl."
While writing, music, and art had been the path I had been on my entire life, they were also the strengths which I saw as trappings. And I still wonder how many choices we have in the paths we end up in — the years of practicing certain skills which flower and bloom and mold who we are. It's funny how in sports and dance we see this skill-molding and a specific path enforced on kids for years at an early age. And at the epitome sits ballet: four-year-olds in fluffy, pink tutus performing the splits and enduring extensive training to grow into dancers who fantastically surpass average physical abilities.
But the thing about paths is that our child-curiosity is most true to what we really care about. There is no better word than crazy that describes trying to force a mold that goes against your own, or in familiar family-speak, batsh*t.
So why were we not told to harness our unique specialties? Why did nobody tell us? More often than not, because nobody told them. And yet the world has become so creative-minded, with technology having broken down virtually all barriers of entry to infinite pathways.
So as someone who has changed majors and experience between completely different, borderline polar industries: I say don't run from your strengths just yet — they're your strengths for a reason.
And don't get me wrong, I am by no means saying stick to what you know. I know you will fight that phrase as long and hard as I did: with everything you have, and against your better judgment.
But don't ever try to fight or hide who you really are and what it is you truly love. Paths can be changed, but the passionate artist with heart in graphic design or painting will always go further than the J.P. Morgan analyst who'd rather be playing with their video camera (and I realize that's a big population).
I don't believe in fate, but I do believe in a fate that we create, from our longstanding interests and habits which we enforce each day of our lives.
So be your own ballerina.
And if you catch yourself feeling stuck, get out there and build the you of tomorrow—just make sure it's what you want.
