Whatever happened to that?
I’ve always wanted to do things the way that made me feel the most content, the most happy, but too often it seems I’m making compromises with myself, because people keep on telling me something like this: Careers. Workforce. Paying off college debt. Grad School. Industry. Resume. And the like.
Wasn’t I supposed to escape this bullshit in high school? Everyone always wanted to add stuff onto their list of “Things they’ve done”, with one more club, one sport, one more activity. We didn’t necessarily do it because we like it, we did it because we thought that’s how we would succeed.
But college is not high school, especially not in Berkeley. Here we are pushed to do more activities and cover classes that take up far more time then your average high school filler. We are supposed to give ourselves time to fill in part-time jobs to help pay off our college debt and prepare us for the horror of reality. We obsess over every point on our midterms, as if one point less is a determinant for our own self-worth. We get drunk or do whatever we do on the weekends with the same friends and the same people because it makes us feel secure and gives us a net that protects us from uncertainty and risk-taking. By the time we are done and graduated, we’ve had so little time to reflect. We don’t realize how much better we could have done if we just weren’t pushed into choosing our career paths based on the wrong reasons (money, stability, whatever).
Then finally, if we don’t postpone reality with grad school or what-not, we sell ourselves off to the highest bidder in the frighteningly homogeneous workplace, where our creativity and productivity are inevitably monopolized, cauterized, and destabilized. Does that sound like fun?
So again, where did the learning go? Why can’t we just learn for its own sake?
Where has the passion gone? Why must we all be in a rush to get out into the world? Why do we think money is the only means toward satisfaction? Why don’t we just relax and let go of our worries and insecurities? (These are all rhetorical of course)
***
It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do, and in some ways, I still haven’t. I used to think I wanted to be a math major, go to grad school in math, be the next Ramanujan, do some nice proofs over a few years, win a Fields Medal. Lofty? Yeah, but I always set the bar high. After getting through the mundaneness of high school, I thought this was all I had for me, so I narrowed my field of vision.
Then slowly, I started to realize that I wasn’t really thrilled at the prospect of doing this the rest of my life. I didn’t really enjoy the lifestyle of doing proofs all the time, reestablishing old truths simply because they already existed. All the fun of problem solving had been beaten out and been replaced by something more systematic, or just a reconfirmation that the systems that had been established were working. If that makes sense. So I’m getting that damned major, but I still don’t have a clue as to what I’m going to do with it.
Then I tried Physics. A little bit more appeal, but again something was missing here. Although I didn’t like total abstraction that I found in math, I was a little bit out of sync with this material too. Physicists are fucking intimidating people. I sat in on a graduate seminar and was completely overwhelmed. I always think I never gave physics enough of a chance, but for the moment I’m on hiatus.
Slowly it’s coming to me that I don’t really fit in any major in general. Majors are just a beginning, a sketch of what it takes not only to succeed and be happy. Any Joe Schmo who gets a B.A. degree can succeed if they know the right people, and any dipshit who flips burgers at McDonalds can be quite happy since they really don’t have much to aspire for other than making a decent living. Getting both is the toughie. It’s the ultimate goal I aspire for these next few years.
So here I am adrift in where I’m going with my life, but at least I’ve learned more about myself. And sometimes self-awareness is the greatest gift one can find. Certainly better than those stupid Valentine’s Day gifts.
