After graduating from university with a degree that I didn’t choose, I took a job as a writer and editor. A creative field that I’d actually wanted to study. I would have saved myself a lot of mental turmoil by not taking that brutally curved advanced pathway, pre-med classes.
I am convinced that I would have done better in school had I been allowed to study a degree of my choosing. Something like literature, philosophy, or communications and journalism. The last of which my older sister had ironically been allowed to study before me. I think I would have done better in school and been happier overall during a very challenging time in my life. I also would have come out the other side with more meaningful experience in my chosen career under my belt. Which would have given me a better boost to the start of my career than what eventuated.
I know that in a lot of ways they were “right” and that my parents had the best intentions and were looking out for me. I appreciate everything my parents have done for me. I acknowledge the wealth of privilege I have for their support. But, at the time, I felt like my arm was being twisted a way I didn’t want it to be. I felt that I had no ownership over my own chosen path in life.
And here we are 10 years later. Me, writing this to you now. I’ve never used that degree. I actually feel that all that my university experience did was set me back the 4 years I spent there. Or maybe even more. What else could I have done with those vital years? The years as a young adult where I could have been working toward the thing I’d known, deep down, since I was a kid that I wanted to be doing “when I grew up.”
But you can’t spend too much time looking back or thinking about these things. Who knows how many other things in my life would have worked out differently. Things that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
And, I’m sure, one day, that degree and that experience will have some use to me. These things in life have a funny way of coming back around. But for the time being, it’s just a nice wall decoration in the spare bedroom of my home where I do most of my creative work.
What’s the takeaway here? I mean, there’s no clean answer. I think I’m just trying to say that while parents might do things with the best of intentions for their kids. At a certain point, you also have to let them be their own individuals and choose their own path.
Besides, when it comes to careers, what even is a career anymore? Jobs and entire career pathways come and go faster than you can blink these days. The idea that there is a single type of career that will give you gainful and stable employment is an old idea. An idea that some are clinging to from days that have since passed.
