I’m reaching a very unique point in my life where small talk at parties has shifted from “what’s your major?” to “what do you do?”. With graduation comes the end of the collegiate grace period where we can no longer dabble in various disciplines to “find ourselves” but must now commit to a career path and establish our position. As seniors, on the steps of the real world with our childhood behind us, we toe the starting line in the race to become successful.
This semester, I watch friends push physical and mental limits to attain interviews for unpaid internships(institutionalized slavery) on the off chance that they might be offered jobs that they are overqualified for. In the morning, I pass my roommates in the bathroom waking dutifully for work and returning exhausted from their underpaid jobs. Those who were irresponsible, aimless juniors just a year before, now exude a swagger of maturity and control. There’s something beautiful that happens when you start making your own money. Adjusting your life to a budget. Working for a boss who sees you as an investment and not a person. My mom still has trouble believing that her unpunctual son, now wakes up at 7am everyday for work, wearing shoes that don’t show his toes. A large part of this growth that I’ve witnessed all around my class comes from an immense pressure, applied both internally as well as from family/society, to ultimately become something. College students flounder and panic as they approach deadlines to declare majors and pursue careers. All while uncertain if it is what they even want to do. How can we possibly decide? How does one go about making the most pivotal decision of his life. As a current victim of this process, I’ve come to a coping mechanism and perhaps an overall solution that is simply:
To be realistic. practical. To understand that your major, career choice, first interview, first rejection, second rejection, third rejection, starting occupation… don’t dictate the course of your professional life but are merely starting points. At the risk of sounding harsh and judgmental, I find that we over-romanticize our futures with lofty dreams of constant happiness. Many can’t decide what they want to do because they reject a slew of great possibilities that dont meet the requirements of their perfect job. this simply doesn’t exist. Ideally, we would all come home from our jobs as hip-hop dancers thinking “I love krumping and it’s the only time I feel truly alive”… but Step Up was just a movie. College and job hunting have helped me swallow the reality that we can’t all have glamorous jobs that feel just right.
For me, I love writing and children so being an English teacher was a natural compromise. I was telling a friend recently how I feel that I'm settling because journalism would be my ideal career. and that’s okay. It really is. I’m coming to grips with the fact that we can’t all have glorified lives and Wikipedia entries under our names. So instead of contemplating the first step, I’m finding it important to simply seize opportunities of whatever cards I am dealt and roll with the punches.
