I’m standing in a rough semi-circle on a lawn at a party. This guy is rambling drunkenly on, completely content to be his own entertainment. Suddenly, he turns to me, mid-monologue, and asks me what my major is. “Journalism,” I answer. He nods and asks: “So you wanna be a journalist?”

I’m sitting at the table with my dad, who’s asking me how I’m setting myself ahead of the curve and making myself marketable for jobs. “What kind of work do you want to do?”

I’m on the phone with an internship placement firm, and the person on the other end asks, “So, long-term, what do you see yourself doing?”

When you’re a writer, everyone always asks the same question. “What do you want to do?” “Where do you want to write?” And as a writer, that is harder than asking me to do algebra.

I have no idea. I’m a dual-major, journalism and English, but when people ask me if I want to be a journalist, I just sort of shrug. I don’t really know.

People hate it when you say that you don’t know.

Yes, I’m studying journalism. Yes, I’ve written for college magazines and blogs. Yes, I can write a hard-news lead. Yes, I’ve done the awkward, “Can I stop you for a second?” to get a quote. But I’m not a journalist. At least, not right now. And I know people who would slaughter me at the altar of Joseph Pulitzer for saying that.

Being a writer means that people constantly need you to prove yourself. Where have you written? What are you writing now? What are your future plans?

If I could answer honestly, I would be faced with the same level of pity that people generally award to kids who say that they’re still waiting for their Hogwarts acceptance letters.

If I could answer honestly, I would say, “I want to write everything and anything that I can, and I want to make it into my career. I want to write books, and blogs, and I want to help people, and I want to inspire and be inspired.”

I think being a writer is hard because you’re pinning your future on your thoughts. A regular journalist has to be talented with words, but their future is spun from the chaos of the world. An advertising major relies on products and people. But a writer has to create an entire world of work for themselves.

When I write, I’m putting something that I created and nurtured out into the world and letting people tear it apart. I’m bringing people into my mind. I’m letting them see me—metaphorically—naked, completely vulnerable.

But writing is also the only thing that I’ve ever really been really good at. It’s the only thing that I’ve done where even I can step away and acknowledge that I rock at this thing. And the small things, like making myself ugly-laugh at a joke I make, or the big things, like someone coming up to me to say that they liked my latest article, makes my heart burst.

Writing makes me make sense. Verbalizing and computing the chaotic tide of emotions and thoughts and hopes in my head onto paper and making them concrete sorts them like a Rolodex. And that’s why it’s hard to verbalize what fantastical creatures my writing will take the shape of in the next year, five years, 50 years.

Writing isn’t just a career. It’s me breathing and hoping and crying and laughing. It’s my way of thinking. Writing isn’t something I do Monday through Friday. It’s always happening because it’s me.

And it’s so unbelievably cool and magical and beautiful to be a writer because I can thrust my emotions through a computer and make someone feel them for a second, for a minute. I can show people my thoughts.

So when someone asks me at a party what I’m going to do with my degree, or when my parents question whether or not I can turn this into a career, I don’t know how to answer them. Because part of being a writer is taking leaps of faith. It’s putting your heart into your projects and building them up and knowing that they will stumble and fail and falter, but it’s still yours.

In college, I am practically given opportunities to showcase my writing. But when the thought crosses my mind of how can I translate this collegiate work into a post-graduate nine-to-five with dental benefits, everything becomes hazy. Because when you’re a writer, everything is you and the computer keys and your own chutzpah.

I hope to be able to keep my voice in my future work. I hope that I can have a job where I don’t have to sacrifice my opinions in favor of “unbiased work.” I hope that I can create and connect.

In the meantime, I’ll keep writing.