To whom it may concern,

I know how hard it is to not know what you want to do with your life. It’s extremely frustrating, especially when all of your friends seem to know exactly what they want to do. Everyone around you seems to have found their calling and you’re still stuck feeling unsure about everything. The uncertainty may cause you to lose confidence in yourself or put yourself down. It’s hard to motivate yourself to go to classes like everyone else when you’re not even sure what goal you’re working towards. For years and years you’ve had people tell you “Oh don’t worry! You have time to figure out what you want to do!” That time seems to have run out and now you’re stuck in what i like to call “educational limbo."

You’ve finished all of your gen eds at this point (or at least most of them), and you may or may not have already declared a major. You’re getting closer and closer to graduating college and you’re still not sure what you want to do with your life. It’s a pretty sucky feeling.

I’m not here to tell you that it’s going to be okay and I’m not here to tell you that you still have time to figure things out. I’m here to tell you that i’m in the same boat as you. That may sound silly, but I know that when somebody tells me that they also don’t know what they want to do I feel a huge weight lift off of my shoulders. It’s nice to know that you’re not the only one stuck in educational limbo.

I don’t know about you, but if I could go back to my senior year of high school and give myself advice before I started applying to colleges, I would definitely tell myself not to rush into it. I would go back and take a few courses at a time at a community college instead of investing in loans to attend a university right away. I also wouldn’t focus so much on trying to find my niche. I went into school undeclared, and although I may be declared now I still feel undeclared in a lot of ways.

I think it’s important to take the time for yourself and think about what excites you. Think about your dream job, even if it’s something that seems totally unrealistic, and write down a way to make that job come true. Then think about other practical jobs that go along with your dream jobs. Maybe you want to be a famous singer and maybe that’s not the easiest thing in the world, but taking some music classes definitely wouldn’t hurt, right? Or maybe you just don’t have any ideas. That's okay too. Some people don't have that "aha" moment right away, but you have to trust that it will happen to you soon. You will find what you're meant to do.

College is about finding what interests you but you may not find out what interests you through your classes. You could meet someone on your floor who volunteers for an animal shelter and find out that you really love animals and you want to be a veterinarian or one of your gen ed professors might mention a previous job that they've had that you've never thought of before.

I know how it feels to not know. It's scary when everything is completely up in the air and nothing is settled. I wish somebody had told me that I don't need to rush into picking a career path right away. In my opinion, college is more about figuring yourself out and less about your career. That may sound a little silly considering that the entire reason that most people go to college is to get a job, but I just think that in the two and a half years that I have been in college I have learned so much about myself. Even though I still don't know what career I want to have when I graduate, I feel confident that by the time I graduate I will know who I am as a person. College has taught me that you do not need to define yourself by a specific career.

You may not have all the time in the world, but as long as you are studying something that you're interested in, you are not wasting your time. You may not have a career path set in stone, but if you love something enough you will find a way to make a career out of it.

Sincerely,

A girl who still doesn't really know what she wants to do