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You have time.
Don’t worry, you have time.
They tell you that right up until the moment you don’t. In 8th grade our guidance counselor gave us a worksheet talking about different careers. At the time, Community Organizer sounded pretty cool. But was it what I wanted to do with my life? I didn’t know. I still don’t know. I took classes not knowing, I applied to college not knowing, and I will probably get a degree not knowing. People told me, “You have time to pick your major,” until the day we had to file the paperwork when they all said, “Why don’t you know your major yet???”
I started in Environmental Science, went to Neurology, then Sociology, and on the last day, panicked and signed on to Economics. It wasn’t that I wasn’t thinking about it — I thought about it nearly all the time; I have an embarrassing amount of spreadsheets that I used trying to plan out my life. I just didn’t know how to know.
If I could do it all over again, I’d be in Psychology, with maybe a minor in Film or English. I didn’t take the shortest path to get here. But I didn’t take the scenic route either. It was a lot of marching through weeds and timber, when I think if I had just stood up and looked around, I could have seen the path sooner.
As with every piece I write, I claim no expertise, only experience. Am I only 21 years old? Yes! But all I hope is that one of these pieces of advice is useful. So here is what has helped me.
