When I started my Rutgers career, I was dead-set on being a chemistry major — somewhere between an inorganic degree and environmental chemistry. I mapped out schedules for the next couple of years and cringed at the amount of math I would have to endure until I could be done with it forever. I thought that this was what I wanted.

Freshman year was fine. Aside from a lot of crying (for other reasons), I got out with a decent GPA — the usual story. People still gave me funny looks and their condolences for marching forward to Organic Chemistry. Aside from a rather disastrous experience with Multivariable Calculus and a lethal blow to my GPA, I, like so many others of my kind, got a C in Orgo. Okay, I thought, so I’m about average. Let’s move on to the second level.

Needless to say, I completely failed my first Orgo II exam. I got a 20, which more or less told me “it’s over.” While I’m not here to trash the Rutgers Chemistry Department, I will say that their methods do not work for everyone, and evidently, they weren’t for me either. I didn’t have the will to continue and after some more crying, I ended up dropping the class and taking some filler classes. I survived my fourth semester of college with some repaired morale and a shred of my dignity left, but I was still fiercely unhappy. I had no idea what I was doing with my life anymore.

Unfortunately for many American teens, we are pressured into making some of the most important decisions of our lives before we turn 25 — that is, before our brains are technically fully developed and our decision-making becomes more rational and sound. By the time we enter college (usually at age 18 or 19), we are expected to know approximately what path we’re going to follow until we retire. By the time we graduate, we ought to follow the path chosen for us while we were in a daze of stress, work, and trying to get enough sleep. And to add insult to injury, we are expected to pay a debt that is only rivaled by a mortgage for the rest of our lives. And Baby Boomers wonder why Millennials are so bitter all the time.

Whether you’re a freshman about to start a new semester or a senior waiting to graduate just to be over the stress and collect your debtor’s total, the whole changing major business must have come on the table at some point. For a lot, and I mean a lot of college students, it actually becomes a reality. Some of us end up in one major because we were told to, or because we thought it would ensure the most financial security when we have to start scraping around for jobs. Others, like me, just honestly thought that they wanted one thing, when in reality, it was not meant to be. I’m sure that some people can actually come up with the willpower to try and tough it out, but I wasn’t that person. After several stress-induced breakdowns, I’d had enough of my bad romance with my major and had to get out.

So I turned to an old love of mine — writing. Having already taken a few writing and English classes as a backup, I found that I could probably scrape together the remaining requirements in my last two years and graduate on time — a full year before I thought I might be able to as a chemistry major. I went into my third year of college with a jaded and tired outlook on college. I felt defeated, thinking, “Wow, everyone was right. I was pretty crazy to choose that major.” There were few people I told — in fact, people I did tell from high school. Those were the people that I expected to pick up a hint of pretentious aura from, as if they knew I wasn’t smart enough to tough it out either. To be honest, I never really enjoyed academia, and college ended up being no exception.

But things did get better. I started actually finding my classes interesting, I was being challenged but not outright told that I was an idiot who knew nothing. I was given a chance to actually learn and cultivate skills that I deemed valuable. And best of all, I got to write.

All throughout my academic years, I’d become blindsided to one of the loves of my life. Unfortunately, since much of my schooling throughout high school completely cut out any traces of creative writing. It was up to me to find that time for myself, but with all of the stress of school, I automatically equated writing to pain. At least, that’s how I still feel about essays. When your classmates are constantly talking about increasing font sizes to fractions of points on their essays to meet the page requirements, you know that your school system is not doing any favors.

I’m a creative person — a self-taught artist from age 7 (and with still so much to learn), a dreamer who spends more time thinking of my own fictional characters and worlds than solving math problems. I wasn’t the type of person who belonged at a desk sobbing over finding limits that don’t exist or trying to keep myself together to get through one more exam so that I don’t fail a class. There are better things to cry over — more important things — other than numbers on a page that you honestly can’t even understand.

Despite all of this, somehow I deluded myself into thinking that the path I chose when I was seventeen was the path that I would have to take to my stress-induced, premature grave. I guess that’s just because we have a lot of pressure on us from the very start. We adopt this asinine mantra of, “don’t just get good grades, get good SAT scores to get into a college to get a degree, to get a job to earn lots of money.” Unlucky ones get this from their parents too. Some parents, like mine, include happiness as a requirement, but a lot of parents just don’t nowadays. The way they remember things is not how we are living it. My mom went to a pretty good school for about ten thousand dollars a year. The only debt she has to worry about is her mortgage.

Unfortunately, money is important. We can’t really do much about that — but I feel like we should have the right to be happy with our decisions, especially if it’s something we will be dealing with for the rest of our lives. A lot of artists I know have it really tough, having to do constant freelance work, take commissions and work other jobs that might take their time away from their passions. And just like academia, writing can often be equated to pain again. I don’t think that’s fair, for people who actually enjoy math and science, and are really good at it, to be the only ones to actually get “rewarded” for their efforts. I’m definitely glad that they are because they deserve it for the hard work they do — but I only wish that it could be more equal and fair for those in the liberal arts and creative arts as well. We shouldn’t have to suppress our passions or talents because we won’t get a big check on payday — we should enjoy what we study, no matter what it is.