moving out // pressure

Tomorrow is move out day, which means another two semesters are behind me. You would think this excites me, yet it absolutely terrifies me. Four semesters done, four semesters left. Four semesters left to figure out what I want to do with myself. This brings me to the question: is there too much pressure on college students when it comes to their future? As I’m sure you either know from personal experience or by assumption, the answer is a big fat yes.

First of all, it is certainly absurd that freshmen are expected to know what they want to major in or have a career in.   In the fall I’ll be starting my junior year, and I can honestly tell you I still have no clue as to what I’m doing with my life. I applied and was accepted to my university as a film major, changed to undecided before my freshman orientation, thought I was going to major in arts and entertainment management all of freshman year, and didn’t declare communications and pre-law until the second half of my sophomore year.

This leads me to my next question: how the hell do people actually pick a major? A quick word of advice if you’re feeling stuck: if you have a “sort-of-kind-of-not-really” major that you’ve been taking classes for because either your parents have told you to major in it or you have an interest in the subject, just go with it. I’ll be honest again, I hate when people ask me why I’m a communications major and what I want to do with it (I know it shouldn’t be that difficult of a question) because I literally have no idea. One time a kid asked me what communications was and my reply was “I wish I could tell you.”

Here is where the magic of minors comes in. For example, communications is so broad that it’s going to be extremely difficult to find a job after school, so by choosing a minor it’ll make you stand out against other candidates when you’re applying for jobs. I chose pre-law as my minor because as of right now I want to be a lawyer. Could this change? Possibly. I’m hoping it doesn’t but if it does I’m sure I’ll be able to figure it all out.

I think a lot of people believe that whatever major they choose is the only career they can have after graduation, but this is completely untrue. Almost every adult I know has a career that has nothing to do with what they majored in. My uncle majored in psychology and now he is a lawyer, didn’t take one law class until he went to law school. Someone else I know has a communications degree and their masters in higher education, and now she works as a guidance counselor for undecided peeps. That’s the beauty of grad school.

The last question I want to cover is whether you should pick a career because you love it or because it makes a lot of money. I’ve personally always had mixed feelings about this. A year ago my plan was to get my communications degree, minor in marketing, and go to makeup school and become a professional makeup artist. The communications would play into my blogging about makeup, the marketing minor would teach me how to market myself as an artist, and the makeup school would help me perfect the skills I already have used on myself and my friends.

Then over the summer, after my first year of college, I saw my tuition bill and thought to myself “well shit that’s a lot of $$$$” and I realized that with the amount of money I am going to owe by the time I graduate I better be able to make enough money to pay back all of my loans and make a living for myself. This is when I decided that as much as I love makeup, it couldn’t be my main source of income. Yes, many people make a very nice living as a makeup artist, but if I had to guess they didn’t decide to be a makeup artist after enrolling in a four-year university that costs over $60,000 per year!! Along with the fact that tuition increases every year!!!

So I decided to take my interest in law further than just watching Suits every week and minor in pre-law. It’s actually petrifying because I have to start looking at law schools in the fall (if you have any recommendations feel free to share!!) and in the spring I have to take the LSATs. Yay!!

If you’re lucky enough that you can find something you love to do that will make a lot of money, then by all means go for it, but I personally would rather pick something that I not only have a interest in but will also pay back my loans!!  I’m going to stop here because I could probably go on for hours about this stuff and if I had to guess the majority of people that even clicked on this post stopped reading by now (if you’re reading this comment something below, I bet if you look there’s nothing there!!) Until next time..

xx Nicole

Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s