From a young age, we were taught that college is the path that we’re supposed to take. In the end, college is the path that most of us ultimately do. Into our extended schooling, we’re expected to know exactly what we want to do with our futures. They want us to pick our majors, know what we want to do with it and where we want to take it. This isn’t realistic in a lot of cases.
To that, I say, “What does it matter to you what I do with my life?”.
Freshman year of college up until the second semester of sophomore year, I was undecided. When I told people this, I felt as if they were looking down at me for not having a major. Throughout high school, I assumed I wanted to be an English major and go into publishing thanks to all of the romance novels that I read about the main character being an English major going into publishing. This all changed one day while I was sitting in my Writing 106 class. I realized how much writing I would have to do if I became an English major and was almost immediately turned off by that idea.
It took me months to find something that seemed to even pique my interest until something finally did. In the second semester of sophomore year, I applied to the Public Relations program on campus. It was nerve-wracking, definitely, but worth it. Here I am now, in the second semester of my junior year, loving all of my classes and more than happy to go to class and get the work done. But these things don’t just happen overnight.
When you’re stuck in a place that’s got you feeling lost, it’s more than alright to start from the very bottom and work your way up. Coming into college undecided as a freshman gives you the chance to explore anything that you could possibly be interested in. It stops you from limiting yourself and I’m not saying that coming in with a major will limit someone, they’ve just found what they love to do already. Even if you end up changing your major, don’t be afraid to try something new.
If you begin to follow a path that you find yourself becoming excited about every day, you may have found your “calling”, using that term loosely. Work is also talked about in a bad light. Many people complain about going to work or doing the work that has been assigned to them, but once you find something that you’re excited about, you allow yourself to become more comfortable with the idea of going to work every day.
It’s okay to not know what you want to do in life just yet, things like this take time. It’s up to you where you want to go and when you want to.