The idea that you should have your entire life figured out and planned to a science before you turn 18 is unrealistic, insane and quite stupid. Whoever decided this should be the norm must have forgotten what being a young person is like.
While most people reading this are likely still growing, it’s undeniable that someone still in high school isn’t even close to being completely grown up or fully maturing yet – the frontal lobe is still developing by that point.
For starters, much of what you decide early on may have been slightly or directly influenced by the wishes of your parents. Whether these match up with what you want to do can vary, but it’s rare for someone of college age to have their life figured out without some external guidance, often from their parents.
Or maybe you had a teacher who wanted to push you in a certain direction, but you ended up veering off course into something that interests you, not your teacher. It’s better that way – these are supposed to be your own goals for your own life, not someone else’s.
This was my reality until I got here. I tell people all the time that I’ve wanted to get into news reporting and journalism since I was a kid. The story about how I’d read The Bulletin, the community newspaper serving the Lawrenceville, Bloomfield and Garfield area, is true and I’ve told it many times. But my path to where I’m at wasn’t so linear – I thought I was going to be an environmental scientist.
How does one go from learning about volatile organic compounds (VOCs), dinosaurs in different prehistoric eras and how many different types of electricity production involve something spinning a turbine, to writing news stories and doing communications work? Having a change of priorities, a loss of passion and a different dream to follow is just one piece of the “why.”
Trying out the whole environmental science thing was valuable and fun while also letting me learn plenty about why people should be concerned about the state of the world’s ecosystems. That education was still a worthwhile experience, and I really did think that’s what my college career was going to look like too.
Everything changed once I was about to graduate high school. I had been doing this type of work since ninth grade at the time, and while our graduating class missed out on many experiences due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we still made it work. However, all the passion I had for environmental science was gone by the end of my senior year.
I will never forget the moment where it clicked that I had to do something different. Sitting in a forensics class where we watched some odd movie – possibly “Gattaca” (1997) – I remembered how bad I wanted to write articles for a news organization when I was young. A goal I pushed aside because my middle and high school did not teach or care for journalism. In my formative years, I supposed it wasn’t right for me to care about journalism either.
Wrong. Taking such a big risk and effectively going against the wishes of my technology school, I decided to become a journalist, and it was worth it.
Why does my personal story matter? Aren’t journalists supposed to keep themselves out of the story? Yes, but this can serve as a reminder that you don’t have to keep doing something you don’t enjoy just because you’ve been doing it for a while – especially with your future career.
You should never do something you hate, God forbid keep doing it just because you think a job in whatever career you think you’ll be stuck in will pay well. Who cares if the pay is good if you hate waking up to go to work?
Enjoying your job is nearly a pipedream, but there’s nothing with at least trying to enjoy what you do. If you feel like change is necessary, go for it. If it worked for me, why can’t it work for you?
