The age-old question: What do you want to be when you grow up? My age-old answer: I have no idea.
As long as I can remember, I haven’t had many “school-related” passions in my life; the only things I’ve enjoyed doing aren’t things I can see myself pursuing as a career. Any time I’ve had a conversation about my uncertainty about the future, I’ve been met with the response, “It’s okay, you don’t need to know, you have so much time” — so why does it feel like I don’t?
When I was a senior in high school filling out college applications, I found myself flying through them until I reached the “select major” question. If I’m being honest, I selected a different major at pretty much every school I applied to, from kinesiology to art. I just really didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and I still don’t. It’s easy to think that everybody around us has it all figured out and that we are the outliers in society, which is sometimes the truth, but most of the time we’re all in the same boat. Pressures from parents, friends, society, and pretty much everything under the sun can make us feel like we’re not doing enough, and that if we don’t know what we want to do, we are a failure and probably won’t ever figure it out — or at least that’s how I felt.
When it did come time to pick a school and a major, I went with UMass Amherst and was placed on an exploratory track, so my major was undecided. That was scary; I felt like I was so far behind everyone that had a major. It felt like every icebreaker had something to do with, “What’s your major,” to which I said, “undecided.” In response, I always got “Oh well, do you have any idea?” to which I replied “No” and was met with an “Oh, that sucks” or an “It’s okay, you’ll figure it out.” Spoiler alert: I haven’t. It took me a long time to realize that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It wasn’t until this summer that I was given a piece of advice that stuck with me. To sum up the advice, I was told that nothing I choose to do has to be forever and to not be afraid to try something new based on my feelings of self-doubt and not being “good enough.”
It’s okay to change your mind about what you want for yourself and your life. Something that I’ve always worried about is feeling “stuck” and that once I choose a major, I’m never allowed to change it, or that if I get a job I hate, I won’t be able to leave because I won’t have the skills to succeed anywhere else. None of this is true. I was also told to forget what I think “society wants to see” and focus on what is important to me, what I want to be good at, and the skills I will enjoy using for the rest of my life, for personal and professional use. I still wake up in the mornings some days and feel like I have no idea what I want to do in the future, but rather than letting it scare me, I stay focused on the things I do know I enjoy and how I can use those skills to help me get to a place I do want to be, eventually.
Not knowing what you want to do with your life or where you see yourself in however many years is a scary and lonely feeling, especially if it seems like everyone around you already has their 20-year plan. Our lives aren’t measured by achievements or realizations that we make at certain ages. Everybody’s timeline is different, and just because someone else “has it all figured out” in the moment doesn’t mean that you’re behind because we’re all different. Too often I fall into the trap of comparing myself to my friends, family, and classmates who seem to know exactly what they want. The most important thing I’ve learned from being in college and having to “figure it all out” is that everybody is different, and that our lives aren’t meant to all be the same. Just because another person is in more clubs than you or might have a “harder” major than you or maybe even has a future job lined up, it doesn’t mean that you’re behind, and it doesn’t mean that you’ll never have those things, too.
You aren’t late or early, you are right on time. Everything will work out for you, even if it’s 10 years after it worked out for somebody else. Trust me, and enjoy the journey!
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