I know that as a now-sophomore in college, I can’t exactly be super picky about what kind of job I get due to having zero experience in literally anything. However, also as a now-sophomore in college, I am choosing to be picky about the job I hold for not only summer but for this coming fall and I am going to explain why.

Going through high school, a big thing going around was talking about our future, college, and careers. Along with talk of that, my friends and I began to try and decide what kind of career we might want to pursue upon graduating and heading to college. Naturally, a lot of my friends discussed what type of money would be made throughout their future careers. Of course, this was something I thought about myself, but to me, it also wasn’t the most important thing.

Although I had some great teachers throughout my high school career, I believe a lot of them put in the idea that you should make a lot of money in your career to be happy. I was particularly a little upset about this because growing up, I felt like I had to make a lot of money to actually be happy with my life and with the career I was going to pursue. I wouldn’t have made a lot of money, but I didn’t care. Music was something I was passionate about growing up and something I am passionate about up until this day, but because it wasn’t something that was in high demand, it didn’t make much money. So, upon discussing it with teachers, they looked at me funny and had to explain that it didn’t make much money, which only caused me to leave confused to upset. This is outrageous to me. The urge to grow up was slowly diminishing throughout my time in high school because I was always scared of not making enough money when I got older.

With all of that being said, although money is an important factor to a job — and honestly, just being able to survive — money is not my main concern. As a kid, I was taught to value hard work and true passion and everything else will follow. To me, truly loving my job and what I do is more important than having money. It is more important to me to actually love going to work and not dread it on a daily basis. I know that I am still young and I am not prepared for a daily adult job, but even right now, I don’t want to hate my part-time job either. I don’t want to waste my time going to a job I don’t like; despite making money, going to a job I loathe isn’t worth it. When someone asks me what I do for a living, I want to be able to tell them that I love what I do and do what I love every day.