Ever since I started high school just over a year ago, I’ve felt this unspoken expectation of knowing what I want to do. Whether that comes in the form of a question on a first day form or a guidance counselor telling us to start thinking about what we want to do, it feels like it’s always there.
“What do you want to do when you’re older?” That question used to have a simple answer. The answer would usually be a doctor, a teacher, a veterinarian, an astronaut, a soccer player… simple one-or-two-word answers that people only said because that’s all they knew.
As I got older, though, it became more complex. I found myself and my friends discussing how long you had to go to college to be eligible to be a veterinarian or how teachers don’t earn much of an income. It became less about what we wanted to do and more about how we would get there. That transition is the reason why it’s so hard for me to figure out what I want to do.
I believe what we want to do is swayed by our upbringing and our surroundings. If your mother religiously watches Law and Order as you’re growing up, you’re probably going to have some sort of interest in law, justice or other themes that are featured. On the flip side, your career might be determined before you’re even born. A lot of parents place an extreme amount of pressure on their children from a young age to be a doctor, a lawyer or a chemist. My parents have both had jobs in multiple fields, and my mother completely switched industries after 10 years of not working. This has given me an insight into many different careers, but has also fueled my indecisiveness.
When I lived in New York, the school system was very different. Once you got to middle school, you were basically on a set path for what you wanted to do. When you’re in fifth grade, you have to test and audition to get into a decent middle school, and the process is that much harder when the best high schools only accept as low as two students from each middle school. These processes are strenuous to say the least, but they kept me focused. From age 12, I knew I would be essentially grandfathered into a good high school’s drama program, and then soon use that to get into college. But when I moved to a small town in North Carolina, all that guidance just faded into the background. After almost three years of doing the same thing, I no longer wanted it anymore. What if that mindset applies to my real career when I’m older too? What if I just get sick of a job every three years and fear that I’ll fall into the same old routine every day for the rest of my life?
The summer before freshman year, I had my heart set on being a lawyer. I thought law was so interesting and I had a big aspiration to do it. I started researching the best colleges to go to for law and what type of law would be most appealing to me. The more I thought about it, however, the more I became wary of it. When I told friends I wanted to be a lawyer, the response I got was, “But that’s so boring.” The attraction I once had to law was slowly fading.
At the beginning of this sophomore year, I got an email about meeting with my Career Development Coordinator. I clicked the box that said yes, I did want to meet with her. But what was I supposed to tell her? That I had no idea what I wanted to do? What if I was taking all these classes to help me seem appealing to a certain college, only to change my mind completely and not have anything built up for this new interest?
For me, it feels like all my peers know what they want to do. They want to be a dental assistant, a historian, a journalist or a makeup artist. Maybe they have an ambition to make it to the NFL or the NBA. Whatever it is, they want it.
It doesn’t help that my family is full of entrepreneurs, medical professionals and innovative minds. It’s not like I’m not passionate about anything, because I am, but they’re not things I would be interested in pursuing as a career. I love photography, but I don’t feel compelled to be a photographer.
As my second year of high school starts, I’m forcing myself to be more open-minded as a way to hopefully find something that I want to do. It’s scary to not know what path you’d like to take when high school only lasts four years. I will continue to expose myself to different opportunities to help myself figure out what exactly it is that I want to do.
– By Georgia O’Reilly
