When you were little, what was your answer for what you wanted to be when you grew up? Were you going to be an astronaut, or an actor, or a vet, or a mom? Most of us were. As kids, we have this indefinite room to dream and imagine what we want to be. The older we become, the less imaginative our dreams get. We start focusing on what career is the easy way out, or what will make us the most money. We push our dreams aside to fulfill careers that our parents predestined for us. We’re expected to be in the uppity-up at all times. So naturally, what career comes to mind when you think of that? To me, its pre-med. Don’t get me wrong, I give tons of credit to the ones who go into that path and truly have a passion for it. I wish I loved the field, but in reality, I know it isn’t for me and that is okay. While I completely agree that pre-med and similar fields require knowledge and smarts, I don’t find that it should discredit my major either.

If you didn’t already know it, I am a film major. What that has taught me is that probably three-fourths of the population thinks I pick up a camera for five minutes, film whatever there is, and I have a video. I wish it were that easy. Maybe for you that works, but for the rest of us, lots of work goes into the entire process. It’s a process that people fail to see because of all the behind-the-scenes work.

If you’ve ever read any of my articles, you’ll realize I love to tell stories. So naturally, it’s story time.

Over the summer, my aunt and cousin decided they wanted to start a vlog on Youtube. However, neither of them realized the work that went into that to make it a ‘good’ vlog. For this particular form of outreach, pre-production wasn’t really needed, so I will save the longevity of that process for another day. (You’re welcome.) The post-production process is what they needed the most help with. Neither my aunt nor cousin knew how to work the editing software on their computer, so I sat them down for Demi’s Editing 101 class. I tried to squeeze as much information as possible into an hour’s time, and honestly, that was only long enough to show them how to make cuts, to piece together videos, detaching audio and adding music or sounds, and the other general components. My aunt’s thoughts at the end were “Wow, I didn’t realize how much work actually went into editing a video. That’s a lot of work.” Yes, yes it is.

Maybe you’re an education major. For starters, you have to know how to handle kids in your class. Everyone comes from a different background and is raised differently. I asked a friend, Adrianna, who is an elementary education major, what she thought was difficult about her major. She brought to light all of the ways she has to know to work with every individual kid in order to make the classroom work. She says that “people can’t just want to be a teacher because they like kids. They have to be prepared to take on every kid acting a different way and learning how to make that function within their class.”

I’m here to say this: whether you’re a pre-med, or whether you decided to do something else is completely your choice. Every major has its own ways of learning, and in each, there is a knowledge one must reach in order to succeed. So, while you aren’t studying anatomy, but instead, you’re practicing voice and piano because you’re a music major, be proud of that moment. We each have something to teach the world no matter what we choose to do.