The Observer, February 22, 2008
Volume XL, Issue 18
A Fresh Perspective: Students should explore interests before choosing future career
I came to college with vague plans for my career, which I've since dramatically discarded. I also began this second semester with lofty plans, including a strict study regimen, which has since exploded in a puff of smoke. Yep. I've slacked on about half of my course reading, once again, and my notes are in what could only be called…a state of disarray. If you wanted to be fancy about it.
Now, almost everyone can identify with the latter gap between ambition and realization. We've all lived that familiar cycle: it begins with a resolution not to procrastinate, and then ends five minutes later in a mindless session of watching Tila Tequila while we ought to be doing suggested problems from the textbook. And though not all of us have experienced the first sort of plan-changing – that dramatic mid-freshman-year life goal change – everyone knows at least a couple of kids who've made the switch from engineering to pre-dental, or from biology to cognitive science. The freshman major-swap is usually treated with a knowing little smirk by those above, but I'm here to posit that a little flexibility in ambition is an admirable trait.
How did we choose these presumably lifelong career paths we've now begun working for? Can college freshmen really know what we, to put it dramatically, "want out of life?" At Case, perhaps, there is a slightly skewed perspective of this issue, because there exists a slight vein of careerism that would have many students attach their life desires and ambitions directly to the title of a career. Which, I might humbly say, is perhaps a bit backward for an ambition.
If a person spends his undergraduate years as a slave to an arbitrary goal he picked in fourth grade, the first time an aunt, uncle, or teacher said, "Say, you made a great leaf project! Are you interested in science? You're pretty bright; you ought to be a doctor," he runs the risk of never finding out why he wants to be a doctor. I suggest we all try to grow into careers…find the "why" before the "what," rather than picking out careers first and then meticulously constructing them.
Regarding the gap between my own initial Case plan (pre-med) and reality: I found, at some point, that simply banging my head against the brick wall of future doctorhood would not suddenly render my head any more receptive to processes I found dull, nor would it magically make that same head any happier about the process. We may be what we repeatedly do, but that means that if we repeatedly do something unpleasant, the outcome isn't likely to be magically pleasant. Chemistry lab didn't really work, because I didn't really want it…or what it prefigured (for me, the endless drudgery of the rest of my medical school life). It is "wanting" that adds the magic of success to a successful ambition. No amount of head-busting will do it, if you don't want it. It's all so much fluff, without the proper desire.
I had chosen my first career end (doctorhood) rather blindly, and was consequently working toward a completely arbitrary object. I had no way of knowing if I wanted this object, which itself was detached from anything I had any experience with.
The gap between goal and reality is best crossed with desire. If you find yourself failing your second-semester goal of spending eight hours a night studying in the library, you should probably check your desire. Yes, the problem is the fact that you don't really want to spend eight hours a night studying! The problem of procrastination is solved! And you wondered why you could never stick with your study regimens. Now, figure out how to manufacture the desire to fulfill such a plan, and you're golden…or, simply slack off until you grow into a natural method of studying, which stems entirely out of your true desire to learn. And explain to your professors that you are not slacking; you are simply finding yourself, and please would they wait whilst you grew a more organic academic ambition? They'll totally understand.
Instead of running through majors and committing whole-heartedly to new plans every semester, I'm going to allow myself to develop real ambitions first.
Elizabeth Brott is a first-year student.
