The College Conundrum

Today, at nine o'clock in the morning on a Saturday, I'm sitting in Felicia's trying to decide what I want to do with my life. 

This is not an easy task, at least for me. However, as much as I have tried, it is not an easy thing to forget about. Quite the elephant in the room. Much to my dismay, it seems to be the topic of choice for all family gatherings. I try to brush it off as a rhetorical question, but to no avail. So that leaves me with an awkward silence and a muttered "I dunno," as well as a red face and the feeling that I really need to get on this whole life-decision thing.

Even with my friends, it comes up. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that at 16, it’s incredible that people can absolutely know what they want to do with their lives, or at least seem to. I have friends who want to be lawyers, doctors and physiologists. Me? I mumble my way through these conversations.   

When I tell people that I don’t know what I want to do in college, or with my life, they give me a look, and then ask, "Well, what do you like to do?" It’s really not that easy. I like to read, I like to hang out with my friends and drink coffee but that doesn’t mean I'm going to spend my life as a barista at the Starbucks in Barnes and Noble. 

As for school, I love English, so it would make sense for me to major in journalism. But I also like social studies, so it would make sense for me to major in something like international affairs, or international relations or international business. Or political science. I've also toyed with the idea of being a lawyer. See my problem? These days, what you pick to study in college depends on whether or not you're going to be able to get a job after you graduate. At least for me it does. So I'm terrified that I will major in something like business, be bored to death and then not be able to apply it to what I really want to do when I graduate.

Well, I at least take some solace in knowing that whatever I do, I want to do it in Washington, D.C., and I want to minor in Spanish.

One of these days, I'll figure it out.

Until next week,

Rach