As teenagers, everyone is expected to have some idea about what they want to do for the rest of their lives. We pick our universities and our majors based on career paths we imagine at the age of 17 or 18, without really knowing everything the university or the workforce has to offer.
I fell victim to the same system in high school, and I made the decision, at the age of 16, to aim to become a lawyer, mostly because my high school teachers thought I would be good at it. I picked my original major (psychology) because my sister suggested it, and I thought my dual credit introductory class was kind of interesting, not because I had a genuine drive to learn psychology.
As a freshman, I took a biological anthropology course, and I fell in love with the content. Less than two weeks into the class, I went to the professor and explained that I felt I was at an impasse in my college career. I loved learning about primate evolution, and I felt like I was answering some unspoken question about where we came from as a species that had always sat in the back of my mind.Â
My professor explained that I didn’t have to fully align myself with a plan at the age of 18, but I was set in my ways and didn’t listen. I was dead set on going to law school, but I allowed myself to explore the field of biological anthropology more. I ultimately declared a second major in anthropology a month later. That winter break, I went with that professor to his field site, and it may have been the most influential decision I’ve ever made. It led me down a path of discovery, centered around this new love of paleontology and primatology.
I’ve continued to explore the field of biological anthropology, and I’ve started gaining research experience with current graduate students I met in the field. I’m taking a class dedicated to identifying all vertebrate bones. My current plan is to go to graduate school after graduation. I feel worlds apart from the stubborn 18-year-old who was having a crisis about what I was passionate about and how I could apply it to my career.
I have always enjoyed school and learning, but exploring my academic passions in college has completely changed the way I feel about education. Sometimes, I can’t help but feel overwhelmingly grateful to be at a research institution with countless experts to learn from. If there is any academic interest I want to explore, there is someone at the University of Texas who knows something about the field. I have the opportunity to learn from these experts in every class I take, and I feel the need to learn everything I possibly can and take every class that even slightly piques my interest.
I no longer see college as a means to an end;Â I see it as more of an opportunity to learn in a way I may never again have the opportunity to. As that same professor helped me realize recently, not taking every opportunity, every class, trying different labs and research methods, would be something I would come to regret in the future.
If there’s any advice I would give to anyone about to start college, I would say: follow every passion as far as you can, talk to every professor whose research interests you, take every class that sounds cool, and don’t fall into the same rut that so many find themselves in when they treat college as a way to get a degree rather than a way to learn.