I can’t speak to what people might call the typical (or Hollywoodienne) college experience— parents crying as you walk up the stone steps of your dormitory, holding a single cardboard box (that somehow contains all the really cool things your really large dorm room will shortly contain); attending frat parties and having lunch on the impeccably green campus lawn or the steps of the Met (oh wait no—that last one was just Gossip Girl). I can however speak to what I feel is the typical emotional college (or in my case, university) experience—crippling self-doubt and fear while staring into the dark abyss that is the “future”.
WHAT DO I WANT TO BE WHEN I GROW UP? I DON’T KNOW, A SANE PERSON?
We’ve all been asked that very haunting question: What do you want to be when you grow up? We shove it in the faces of kindergarteners every day. We’ve all drawn pictures of ourselves as astronauts or doctors or firemen or whatnot, and our parents have all proudly put up these Picasso-style abstract finger paintings on the fridge. Throughout my life, I’ve wanted to be a veterinarian, a marine biologist, a writer, a veterinarian assistant, and for a brief two-week period, a teacher. I’ve been pretty much all over the map in terms of professional ambitions.
Now, I answer that question with my own question (don’t you love it when people do that?): Why do we care? Why are we so focused on the future? It hasn’t even happened yet. The past, see, that’s interesting. Because it’s already happened. The accumulation of the past is what makes the present. Studying, learning about the past helps us make better choices (can you tell my minor is in history?). So why are we all so obsessed with the future? Why are we all so focused on our “ten-year plan”? I’ll tell you why: because the concept of the future is in the very definition of the word hope.
The Merriam-Webster definition of hope is as follows: “to cherish a desire with anticipation”. Anticipation itself is “a prior action that takes into account or forestalls a later action” (man, I do love a good online dictionary). See? If we completely ignore the future, and live too much in the present, the concept of hope cannot really exist. And as a person who lived many years without it, I cherish how important of a thing hope is.
However, we live a world of delicate balance, where one concept cannot exist without its opposite. In the case of hope, its opposite (and antonym, according to my bros Merriam and Webster) is doubt. Because of the obvious uncertainty of the future, doubt plays a big part in our anticipation of it. We can do everything right and still, things might not turn out the way we want. There are so many things that are out of our control. For a control freak like me, that’s one of the scariest things of all. The scariest part, for me, is the things I can control. Because I have no freaking clue what to do.
CLEARLY, I SHOULD HAVE APPLIED TO THE SOUTH HAMPTON INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY INSTEAD
When I first applied to Concordia University’s Creative Writing program in the spring of 2011, I was not accepted. I remember the day so clearly. I was so overwhelmed with disappointment that I went out and bought a cheesecake. I would have eaten the entire thing myself, but luckily, I have a really great mom who would not let me eat my feelings (also, she really wanted some of that cheesecake). That fall, I entered university in my second choice: English Literature. Spoiler alert: I hated it. SO. MUCH. I hated it so much that I dropped out after one semester. I won’t take you through the horror that was 2012 (it featured a job I moved across the country for that I ended up failing miserably at, the death of my grandfather, and a really poor decision with an exacto knife in my dad’s workshop), because frankly, I’m trying to forget the year altogether. Essentially, from that fateful day in March 2011, till say, today, the concept of what I want my future to be has been all over the place.
DON’T STUDY WHAT YOU LOVE. SERIOUSLY. DON’T DO IT.
I was finally admitted into the Creative Writing program in 2013. I started off with a burst of optimism. I was so excited to be studying the one thing I had a shred of passion for: writing. I was excited to learn how to be a better writer, and meet people who also loved to write. My first year went by in a blur. My second year, which I am now about three-quarters the way through, was, and remains to be, quite a different story (pun half-intended?).
To understand more clearly how I feel about writing now, you need to something very important about me: I am not good at a lot of things. Now, I’m not trying to garter pity or fish for compliments, I am simply taking inventory of the facts. I am not athletic, nor am I particularly smart. I am, by all accounts, slightly below average in most things. However, I believe that I am, a decent writer (my mom thinks so, anyway). I understand objectively that I have to at least be a good enough writer to have been admitted into such a competitive university program, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past two years, it’s that I’m probably not as good of a writer as my mom tells me I am.
Again, I’m really not trying to be self-deprecating. While I am a master at that, I really am trying to make a point here. Yes, I’m a good writer, and yes, like in all things for everyone, there will always be people better than me. I know I will never be the best at anything. A fraction of the population ever will be. I am not, nor will I ever be, on par with people like Raymond Carver or Mark Twain or J.K. Rowling. But studying writing, my own writing more specifically, has really taken all the fun out of writing for me. Things I once loved about my writing now drive me bonkers. I had never taken any kind writing course or workshop in my life before university. I can see that amongst my peers I am at a clear disadvantage because of it. It’s maddening, yes, but it’s something completely out of my control now.
The more I study writing, the more I study my writing, the more I hate it. Every day, it loses its simplicity. Every day, it loses its ability to lift me out of the darkest pits of my mind. The more I write, the more it becomes a chore, homework, something I have to do. A few weeks ago, I came to the conclusion that I did not want to be a professional writer. I did not want to kill the last spark of love I had for storytelling by making it my life’s work.
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| A sample of the books I've had to read this year. While my workload has thankfully been manageable, nothing makes me want to read less than assigning 18 books to read in a semester. |
WORKING AT WHAT YOU LOVE MAKES WHAT YOU LOVE INTO WORK
The expression “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life” has always pissed me off. Confucius said this a couple of hundred years before the invention of the university, so I think we should just stop listening to him altogether. Personally, I like my father’s best friend’s philosophy. At my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary party two and a half years ago, he gave me some pretty sage advice: do something you’re really good at that pays well, so you can be done in less time and have more time do things you actually like to do. I can’t imagine my father particularly enjoys writing software-related reports (this is my educated guess at what he does) for people, but it sure does give him a lot of free time to play tennis and harass me and my siblings. Likewise, his best friend has a fair amount of spare time to harass his own children.
The concept of the future is still absolutely terrifying to me. The fact that I still don’t know what I want to do as a career keeps me up at night. The one thing I have ever had a passion for seems to be slipping away from me, and I constantly feel like I’m walking down an endless dark road.
I’m terribly sorry this particular post doesn’t have an uplifting ending. I’m not even really sure what the point of this post is. I guess this was just something I needed to get off my chest.
I take a little bit of solace in knowing I’m not alone in this feeling. A lot of people, even people older than me, face these same feelings every day. I don’t know if there’s ever really an answer to this problem. Someone told me once that it’s okay to not know, and that people just have a tendency to fall backwards into a good profession. While I’m waiting, I guess I’ll just fall backwards onto the couch and binge-watch reruns of Flashpoint, and maybe eat half a dozen Creme Eggs. My mom’s on vacation anyway.
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