What can a girl do to get some peace of mind about her career in her 20s? Well, I am still 19, but that makes it even worse when you think about it. I just want a career where I can love what I do and still be comfortable enough to live my life how I see fit. Sadly, we don’t live in a society where most people can afford to think about their passion and their livelihood in the same breath. In most cases, you love what you do but will never have financial freedom. Or you hate what you do, but your bills will never go unpaid.
Of course, there are exceptions to this. If your passion lies somewhere in the STEM fields, you are lucky. My current major is Mechanical Engineering, but I won’t say that it was my first choice. It wasn’t even my second. However, I couldn’t see myself making any money in the fields that I was actually interested in.
I am a huge music geek. I was in choir for over a decade, and I have been singing probably before I could form full coherent sentences. Music as a career choice just made sense to me, but I had a problem: there really was no money in the music field, nor was there something there I could see myself doing long term. So, what else was out there for me?
My next choice was brought to my attention during high school. I had taken AP Psychology and had absolutely fallen in love with the subject. There was something about learning how the brain worked in a more in depth way that I enjoyed. My plan from then on was to major in psychology. My plan was to major in psychology, go to med school, and become a psychiatrist. However, there was a big problem. I did not want to go to school for the foreseeable future to make this degree actually mean something in the work force. Why couldn’t I make money with just a BS?
So during the summer before my freshman year, I had a giant meltdown and I changed my major a few days before my orientation. I knew that I did not want to go to medical school, and I did not want to work in a hospital. So I knew that I had to make a significant change.
Now we are pretty up to date on my current thought process. I still have no idea if I am going to be happy with my career. However, I know that I will be financially stable. My fear of being financially unstable outweighs my want for passion, and it’s sad that as a society, we have to think this way. Why can’t we be happy and have financial freedom in the same breath? I really have no answer, and I don’t think that anyone will have one any time soon.