Who actually knows what they're doing anyway?

“What do you want to be when you grow up” might be the most ridiculous yet overused question of all time. Yet we ask children this question from the minute they take their first gulp of air, straight through to when they’re completing “When I grow up I want to be...” assignments in the 3rd grade. You know the ones I’m talking about, some cheesy construction paper cut out in the shape of a prospering tree where you write nonsense on it like “Brittany Spears” or “A Rockstar!” I wrote all realistic things of course. When I was five? A dance teacher-until I realized that my ability to keep rhythm was that of a heart in cardiac arrest. Twelve? A children’s therapist. Seventeen? A Sports Analyst-this was short lived people, I realized quickly this was not a world for a young wild like myself. Twenty? A youth worker-yeah, I hate children so, moving on. Twenty three? A higher education professional-which 9/10 people look at me with this “what the hell is that” look on their face and pretend to know what I’m talking about. Essentially, I want to work with college aged adults and support their social development and personal growth through college life outside of academics. I, in no way shape or form, want to be a professor-for now.

If you think back on your personal “When I grow up” tree or the career path that you thought you’d be on, I guarantee you it probably changed every three to five years. We are human beings experiencing new environments, opportunities, and people every single day and the universe is rapidly exposing us to things we’ve not yet had the chance to encounter until now. It is a known fact that some crazy percentage of people change their career path anywhere between three and seven times in a lifetime and actually change jobs ten to fifteen times. It’s also known that people drastically change their career paths-going from a physical therapist, to a business analyst, to an elementary school teacher. If this is all true, explain to me why the hell we make 18 year old's limit their options to explore the world in front of them, by telling them to choose a major and concentrate the next 4-6 years of their lives on one specialization? In the wise words of Gwen Stefani, this shit is BANANAS.

I feel like I always find myself knee deep in a conversation with someone telling me about how they went to school for one thing, but they’re working in a completely unrelated field to what their degree was in. To these people, I applaud you. I feel like half the reason people are so nervous to enter the workforce today, is because it has been engraved in their minds that this is what they will be doing for the rest of their lives. We are raised on the expectation that we are supposed to know what we want to do with our lives, and if we don’t, then we’re viewed as lazy, unmotivated or “in a phase of self-exploration”-this one works best when explaining your current situation to your grandparents.

I personally just entered the Adult Regime one month ago, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared shitless. I suddenly went from working 25 hours a week, going to class at night, and working at camp all summer, to working 40 hours a week and having limited vacation and sick days. I’m not saying that I’m not prepared for that, but what I am saying is that this is an intimidating world for young people. It’s not the work load and responsibility that we’re unprepared for or intimidated by either-it’s the idea that this is what we will be doing for the next 40+ years of our lives. And to all you old folk out there, I’ll tell you right now that it doesn’t help when you mockingly say “Welcome to the real world!” because guess what, YOU DIDN’T PREPARE ME FOR THIS. No one prepared us to take life by the you know what and go after the things that make us happy. We were not exposed to the idea that life is this evolving and ever-changing experience that will take you down roads you never even dreamed of. We were taught to pick a track, and stay on it. And to that I say, we need to be better.

Rather than ask children what they want to be when they grow up, ask them what kind of person they want to be in the world. Rather than knocking the first-year student who enters college as undeclared, we should encourage all students to enter that way. Take a year to self-explore, rather than go through the stress of changing their major half way through the year like most of them do anyways. I’m not saying that the system is wrong, but what I am saying is that we need to remind young people that they have a life to which they can do what they want with, while also working and contributing to society-however, this work should not be their entire lives. How Millennial of me right? To want to work but also enjoy life at the same time. I know we “Millenials” are apparently trash to the generations before us, but I will be damned if we are not the generation to motivate, inspire, and encourage the ones to come after us.