I don’t want to be a lawyer. I don’t want to be a doctor, or an engineer, or a business executive. I don’t want to ever be required to wear a suit or a uniform. I don’t want to wake up early. I don’t want to be rich, powerful, or important.
Why the hell am I here?
What is Lil’ Miss Undecided doing walking among masses of students who have known from the age of six that they want to be a nurse, or own their own company, or work as a criminal justice lawyer? I can’t measure up to them! I can’t walk with that same self-assured gait, confident in my destiny and my place in the world. My laugh doesn’t ring with that sound of jingling coins that alludes to the prospect of financial security.
Did I really need to come to Penn to do whatever I end up doing? Have $200,000 gone to waste?
I like to think not. A Penn education will help me anywhere, right? Even if I become a hardware salesperson or a firefighter, which according to a 2007 survey by LiveScience, are among the jobs with the highest chance of happiness.
Daily, as I look into the void that is my future, I tell myself with a huge smile like that of Red Riding Hood approaching what appears to be her grandmother: “what matters is that you love what you do!”
Which of course, brings us to the eternal question: happiness or money? Right now, I’m leaning towards the former, but all you pre-professional students can feel free to say “I told you so” ten years from now.
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October 3rd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
The point of a liberal arts education (theoretically what you get in the College) is not that it is a means to an end, but that it an enriching process with value in its own right. If this is the education you’re pursuing, there’s nothing wrong with not knowing where you are going afterward. In fact, one would expect that since you grow a lot during this education, you wouldn’t know ahead of time what to do next.
I think the career certainty many have is kind of misleading. Many students at Penn who “know” what they want to be have not an occupation but a lifestyle in mind. Meaning, they know the kinds of lives that doctors, consultants, etc. lead, and they want to have those salaries, live in those places, have those connections, etc. This has little to do with what people in those jobs actually do.
I wrote something which touches on the subject.
October 6th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Happiness is the most important thing. But sometimes you just need to work whatever job is available. A Bachelor of Arts is like the basics to learning any good job. A guy at Harvard started a website to rate women’s breast. The Harvard dean called him into the office and told him to stop it. He changed it to Facebook. Maybe you would like to be a writer.
Do you think that when Sarah Palin got a Bachelors of Science in communication that she imagined that she would be governor and then vice president of the United States? No. She joined the city counsel just to help her community. Maybe you will end up being president of the United States.
October 7th, 2008 at 4:34 am
To help you decide what you want to do, ask your self this question. Say that tomorrow you won $50 million dollars in a lottery. Then you never be concerned about money again. What would you do with your life. Think about that.
Brad Pitt has lots of money, talent, fame and is very handsome. His goal in life is to wipe out poverty in the world. It would be great to make a living doing what you would do even if you were already rich.
Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard. But before he dropped out, he made friends with some extremely inteligent people that left with him. In fact Paul Allen left Harvard with him and he was not good with computers. But he was much better at running a business than Gates. So Gates could concentrate on what he was good at.
So maybe you will make friends at the most social Ivy League college that there is. They could be invaluable to you in the future. Talk to other people about what their dreams in life are. The owner of Burger King, Ray Kroc, was friends with Walt Disney and they would talk about thier dreams with each other. They met at army camp like Forrest Gump (movie) and Bubba. I saw a link in a comment above so I will try to create one. See the 11th paragraph of Ray Kroc>.