As I approach my last year at Augsburg College, I am consistently faced with the question of what I am going to do with my life. When I tell people that I'm an English and creative writing major the question is always, "What do you want to do with that?" which generally, whether it's explicit or not, translates to, "How do you plan on making money with that?"
While I understand the importance of financial stability in terms of my quality of life, I am starting to see that in the U.S. the collective perception towards money is flawed. The worth of something, from a pair of shoes to a college degree, is measured only in a monetary amount. Money determines success, happiness, and overall fulfillment-- that's what we are told, both directly and indirectly, from the day we are born. These ideas, these myths, are constantly feeding our drive and desire for money-- we need more, more, MORE!-- and it has become clear that it is one of the biggest detriments that our country faces today; social equity, human rights, and the environmental health of our planet are constantly and overwhelmingly being sacrificed for more money, more power, and higher profits. As an example, imagine this: there are people and companies in this country who are getting rich off of the imprisonment of other people; incarcerating human beings has become incentivized with monetary profit. Let that one sink in.
As I try to figure out my life path-- discover my yellow brick road, if you will-- I can't help but wonder if I will ever be able to escape this obsession and need for money, which I have coined the American Rat Race.
As probably all people do, when I was a kid I wanted to grow up and do something big with my life. I wanted to make the world better in whatever way I could. I always thought that when I was older I would have the power and independence it would take to set out on this life-encompassing mission. To my despair, I was wrong.
While it is certainly possible to work for the betterment of society, the old phrase, "it won't pay the bills," generally holds true. While I am sure that many people, like myself, still want to do big and positive things with their lives in adulthood, many of them never do. In order to have decent things and lead a moderately comfortable life, most people settle in jobs that will pay the bills, regardless of how vocationally satisfying those jobs may be.
As an example, I can't ever, in a million years, imagine being an accountant or an auditor; spending my days checking, inspecting, and examining arbitrary figures on a computer screen seems like a special kind of torture reserved only for those in the deepest parts of Hell. And yet, I know more than a few college kids who plan on spending their life in this exact field of work. Why? Because pay starts at $50,000 to $60,000 a year.
As I prepare to leave the safety bubble of education and rent-free summers at home, I can only cross my fingers and hope that I'm able to find a job that allows me to bring about positive change in my communities. I don't hold too much stock in religion these days, but I am certainly praying that I never have to sacrifice my morals and my ethics in the name of a reasonable paycheck and a decent quality of life.
