I am one of the rare ones; I have had the same major since I was literally twelve. Once I learned the simple definition of psychology, I knew that was what I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing. As I grew older, I learned more about the subject. I took psychology classes in high school, read journals and articles online, and have now filled my college schedule with way too many psychology classes to be considered sane.

But like I said, I am one of the rare ones. I still have friends that during their sophomore year of college, still have no idea what they want to do with their lives. As my sister embarks on her college application journey, family members constantly ask her what she’s going to major in. She does not know. She has a couple of ideas, Public Relations would be cool, Communications, maybe even Political Science. Yet, at the end of the day, when it comes time to tick off the box on her application, she questions choosing “Exploratory” or “Undecided.”

Growing up, my dad always told us that he wants us to be one thing when we grow up, happy. My dad followed in my grandfather’s footsteps and went to college in Brazil to study architecture. While my aunts and uncles chose their own paths, my dad followed what he thought would make his dad happy. A number of years I won’t say later, the only time that architecture degree came in handy was during my eighth-grade year when my geometry teacher asked me to build a scale model of my home. After graduation, my dad started working in journalism and eventually moved onto Public Relations and Communications, something that nearing the age of retirement, he is more than happy doing.

My mom started college in Colombia as a pre-med student, just like we all were at one point. Eventually she realized she wasn’t happy, and then also passed out when they made her dissect a cadaver, and changed her course of study to Communications.

When it came my turn to decide what to study, I knew one hundred and ten percent that I wanted to study Psychology. Nevertheless, they constantly reminded me to pick wisely, take interesting classes, take my time and find something that makes me happy.

Halfway through my third semester here at UF, I know that without a doubt, I made the right decision. But as I look around I see so many people struggling, questioning their decisions. Do they not know that this is something that they can very likely do this for the rest of their life? As I sit in even my most difficult and inapplicable psychology course, I can’t help but feel so incredibly content, even happy. As much as I struggle in that class, for the concepts and quite complicated, I know that if I had to learn and practice applied behavioral analysis forty years from now, I’ll be happy.

I know that a lot of us can’t help but to stress out about the economy and how choosing an impractical career path will affect our financial futures, but at the same time, I would rather work my butt off to become the best-selling musician of all time, instead of becoming an accountant because it is stable, and spending the rest of my life wondering what could’ve been and where I would’ve displayed my Grammys and AMAs.

Ideally, our lives are designed to spend four years in undergrad only to spend the next 50 years working in the same path until we retire and spend our elderly years looking back at our youth. Hopefully we’ll look back happily, remembering the good old days of dedicating our lives to the things that were important to us.

Stability is important, I know this more than anyone, I’m a Capricorn. But I also recognize that pride and happiness is also important. I, like a lot of us, want to change the world, but it is way too hard to do that when I don’t feel passionate about what I am doing.

If you’re not happy with the prospect of working in your major for the rest of your life, change it. Life is too short to be a miserable accountant; unless you really like accounting, in which case, more power to you, I hope you’re the best, happiest accountant the world has even seen.