Every day, I see students being forced to follow career paths that they didn’t choose. It’s sickening. Many people are here pursuing degrees that they don’t even want. Why? Because of our parents. There’s no question that your parents exercise great influence on you right from birth and even after you’ve left home. Unfortunately, sometimes they implant you with aspirations and goals you never wanted, leaving you feeling unfulfilled and unmotivated now that you’re on your own.
For many, this manifests itself as stress or anxiety. This causes us both to feel unnecessary amounts of stress in our daily lives but also causes us to feel unsettled about the future. It leaves us with a creeping feeling. That what we’re doing isn’t what we really want. We wake up thinking, “What am I doing here?” If you’re like me and you really are following your passions, more power to you. Many students aren’t. Many students are here trying to make mommy and daddy happy.
There are plenty of medical students or engineers who really just wanted to be artists, writers or historians. There are many business students who would trade in their suit for flip-flops. But they don’t because their parents wouldn’t approve. Their parents tell them that work is work and it can’t be something you enjoy. That you need worry about getting a high-paying job first and that personal growth and fulfillment comes second. Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t people who truly want to be in a science or engineering program but they’re there because they decided that it’s really what they want, not what someone else told them to do. What I’m saying is this: at the end of it all you have to live for yourself. You have to because nobody else will.
University is a microcosm of the world and it gives us a unique opportunity to find our place in it. You should be here doing something you love. If you find every day a chore and you find yourself learning about things you have no interest in, stop and think. Shouldn’t you be excited about learning something you’re going to potentially devote your life? Nobody ever said that university was easy but when you’re doing something you really love, it can be a lot of fun.
There’s career counseling for a reason, guys. You’ll never have a better opportunity to figure out what you want to do with your life than right now. Choose wisely.
— Paul Benoit
first-year journalism
