I am getting older (aren’t we all?) and I am a college student. I am having an awful time deciding on a major. I’m a Junior now, and my University is kind of expecting me to pick something already! There are so many things I am interested in, I simply cannot narrow it down to just one thing.
I have always felt pulled in the direction of health care, but cannot decide which branch I would want to study. I’m not entirely certain that I have what it takes to be a nurse, not in a hospital anyway. A nurse practitioner I think I could handle, or a nurse-educator, but not a “regular” nurse. Don’t get me wrong. I think nurses are awesome people that I admire greatly and I am extremely glad that they are willing to do what they do. I just don’t think I have the personality to be a nurse. In real life, I am pretty quiet and sometimes painfully shy and I just don’t think those are good qualities for a nurse to have. I may be wrong, but a nurse so shy they can barely speak to people they don’t know is probably not the best thing. 
I think it would be kind of cool to be a doctor, but I don’t necessarily want to invest ANOTHER 6 years or so in my education. I want something that I can get into relatively quickly and contribute to a decent living for my family. There is Phlebotomy, Respiratory Therapy, Ultrasound Technician, Surgical Tech (which I have done in the past), and many other things. When they all sound interesting and potentially fun, how can I choose?!?!
The thing that I have been thinking about this afternoon, however is commiting to the educational requirements necessary to get where I want to be. I am reluctant to just be finishing up my schooling when I am 45 years old, but does it really matter? So what if I am 45 years old and just getting started doing what I want to do. I am going to be 45 anyway, so doesn’t it make sense to be doing what I want to do when I am 45? Shouldn’t I be doing something that makes me happy?
That question brings up a whole other set of questions and thoughts for me.
Why do we settle for doing things that don’t make us happy? Yes, I know there is the societal pressure that we all feel to “grow up and get a job,” but why are the jobs we so often get something that we have merely settled for? Are we hoping that this job will only be temporary, but it winds up sucking us in like quicksand and before we realize it, we are so deep in that we can’t get out?
There is also the pressure that is placed upon us by our families and friends. They expect us to get jobs as soon as we either turn 18 or graduate from college, and to become independent and autonomous–little islands of self-sufficiency bobbing around in an already overcrowded stream. Just because we have turned 18 does not mean we are “grown up”.
Lately I have been wondering: why do we stop growing up? Someone somewhere decided that once we hit the age of 18 we were adults and therefore done growing up. But that’s not true. Isn’t growing up about acquiring the wisdom we need to survive? About experiencing changes and learning about ourselves? Is that growth not something that continues to happen to us our entire lives? If we all stopped gaining knowledge and wisdom at the age of 18, there are so many things that would never have been acomplished. I think that “growing up” should be a life-long process. Something that we never quite finish doing, not something that ends once we reach a certain age.
So with those thoughts in mind, I am off to see if I can figure out how I want to spend my time while I am growing up.
