As young adults we feel immense amounts of pressure, not just in school but knowing that right after graduation we are going to be thrusted into a world where we're expected to not only hold a job , but to make sure that we even can obtain a job.
The most frequently asked question that you get as a college student is "What's your major?" and the follow up being, "What do you want to do with that?"
Most of the time we don't know what we want to do exactly and it's extremely hard to enjoy college when there is an insane amount of pressure on us to be the next generation of workers representing this country.
I know several people that are stuck in a major that they don't particularly enjoy. They just chose it because they felt as if they had to hurry and pick something to do. Or they're in a major specifically because that's what their parents expect from them.
How is that not stressful?
We get it. We are all aware of the fact that we need to get a job after college, we need to pay back our student loans, and we're all expected to be successful in one way or another. But what sucks about all this pressure is that none of us want to disappoint our loved ones. Some people are willing to stick with a major that they absolutely hate purely to please certain people in their lives.
When you pick your major you shouldn't have to worry about what your parents are going to think. Obviously, every parent just wants what's best for their child. They want their child to succeed and not have to worry about money, but sometimes because of those expectations that parents hold decisions that their children make are influenced.
For example, in high school, I fell in love with science and psychology. I wanted to be a psychiatrist, but my dad told me that I should reconsider purely because psychiatrists go through a lot of schooling and they don't end up making a lot of money. He was still very supportive and his advice came from a caring place and frustratingly enough, I knew he was right, but that's what I wanted to do.
The worst part of it was that I felt as though he would be disappointed if I ended up pursuing that career or got a major in psychology.
Being the stubborn person that I am I, kept with it for my first semester, however, I realized that I didn't enjoy chemistry as much as I thought I would and I changed my career path because I knew that it would benefit me.
Realizing that I was miserable in my original major was what caused me to change, though it didn't hurt that my parents weren't on board for me to go into a science field in the first place. I did end up settling on a major that I am very happy with and that I absolutely love without thinking about what my parents wanted for me, all I thought about was what would I enjoy doing for the rest of my life.
My main point is that you should choose to do what you love to do. I fully understand wanting to please family, however, if you pick a job that you have to do for the rest of your life purely because that's what other people want from you, then you're going to end up miserable.
Do what you truly love what you're getting yourself into or did you choose that major based on the opinion of your parents? Most of us have a big fear of disappointing our parents, but what we forget about is that we are also afraid of disappointing ourselves.
The best advice I can give to someone is to ignore the what everyone expects from you and do what you want to do. Pick something that you love, and everything will work itself out.
