College-Confused
Dear Siouxsie,
I’m going to be a junior in highschool in the fall, and all everyone asks me about is college. It stresses me out because I’m still not exactly sure of what I want to study in college, and I feel uncomfortable when people judge my vague response. Am I supposed to be able to answer people’s intimidating questions about college? Should I know what to say when someone asks me about the rest of my education, and general rest of my life?
Sincerely,
College-Confused
Dear College-Confused,
I genuinely think any age under 21 is way too young to be asked to decide what you want to do with the rest of your life. What the hell am I, a 16-year-old, supposed to know about life decisions? Why are nervous 18 year-olds expected to figure out how to plan out the rest of their lives without problems? It’s a lot to expect of teenagers, and a lot to expect of literally anyone in general. So let’s get this straight: a lot of the pressure you’re feeling isn’t unfounded, and is often unreasonable. Don’t force yourself to obey the expectations of others purely out of stress.
One thing I’ve learned in the last few years, as I’ve started to have more meaningful and in-depth conversations with adults, is that nobody really knows what exactly they’re doing in general. Even the most successful of adults have their own self-doubt, and often make decisions they’re unsure of. Fucking up and making a mistake (or seven thousand) is sooo common, and people need to remember that even the most outwardly confident are often the most inwardly confused. Be aware of the fact that everyone’s just doing the best they can, and they’re doing their best to appear to know what they’re doing. When I first started this column, I had no idea what I was doing, and I’d never written like this to anyone before. I kept thinking, as I wrote the very first response, What the fuck is this? Why did I think this was a good idea? Everyone’s unsure.
On a larger note, I was talking to a family member the other day about a friend of hers, and she brought up a similar discussion to what you’re thinking about right now. Her friend had just quit his job, after realizing he didn’t enjoy it at all, at the age of 35. He was unsure of literally everything in his life, considering moving cities though he had literally just lost his main source of income, and didn’t know what his passion was in life. Again, a 35 year-old man. If a 35 year-old is still trying to figure out what he wants to do in life, and has his own complete unsureities, then you as a junior in high school should know that figuring out your passion in life is literally a life-long process sometimes. People spend their whole lives trying to figure out what drives them, and what brings them joy, and it’s okay to be unsure of what that is as a young adult. My own father had the same sort of life path: he earned a Master’s in a subject he genuinely enjoyed, yet not long after graduating, realized he had no interest in pursuing a career in what he’d studied. He now works a job that brings him a lot of joy, while at the same time still holding a degree that’s basically useless to him now.
College is helpful, and it can do a lot of amazing things for you, but it doesn’t determine the rest of your life for you unless you say it does.
We live in a world where college is starting to be questioned a little, and an educational career in general is being rethinked. Many people don’t even go to college, and become successful later in life, challenging the ideas of a formal education, and others switch their focus of study multiple times in the course of their college education. College is what you determine it is: if you think of it as life-defining, it will be, but if you devalue it completely, it won’t have any value to you. I recently watched a documentary about the college admissions scandal with all of those rich parents paying their kids’ ways’ into school, and it made me rethink the current value of college in the US. These kids are rich enough that they don’t even need to go to college and could live purely off of their parents, but their parents put so much pressure on their kids, and overvalue the Ivy League college name so much they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to ensure their child’s supposed future. If we as a society value college (not necessarily the college experience) to the point where we pay an absurd amount of money, secretly, to get our kids into a college they might now even want to go to, what does college even mean to us at the end of the day? So many parents, especially rich ones, have an entirely ridiculous amount of pressure on their kids to get into a brand-name school, and don’t often consider what the kid themself thinks about college, or what the kid’s opinions are. It’s uncomfortable and absurd to watch, and it makes me entirely rethink what college means.
Whatever. Y’all don’t come here for Siouxsie’s personal opinions on educational and collegiate values in wealthy families, y’all are reading to hear me answer the questions I get. When I speak on all of this, I want to come from a place of personal experience, and as a fellow rising junior, I can definitely relate. It’s expected to be asked about your plans for college, and it’s expected to be able to give a definite (or at least pre-considered) answer. This is unrealistic. It’s okay to give a vague answer, or say that you simply don’t know. I’ve said this, and I definitely got some awkward and even judgemental stares, but I stood my ground. I explained that I was still figuring out what exactly I was interested in, and I backed up my own personal journey. It was tough at first, but as I started to figure out in my own time what I wanted to study, I gained the confidence to tell people that I was “still figuring it out but had a few ideas.” And I definitely gave some vague answers to confused, judgemental parents, but I felt more confident in explaining that I was still figuring it out, just like the rest of the world.
I’m still figuring it out. Like everyone else. College-Confused, we’re all just Life-Confused. There is no straight line, there is no straight path, and there is no simple answer. You’re allowed to still be figuring it out, for the rest of your life, but sometimes you do have to choose to stick to something for a while. For right now, be open to finding what works for you, and don’t let college be this large scary cloud looming over you. As a young adult, this is the perfect time to experiment with life, and you should allow yourself to try everything before starting to narrow onto something that you truly feel passionate about. And when you do find it, because you will, hold onto it, because it’s passion that keeps a lot of things moving in the world. Good luck, CC, but I know you’ll get there in the end. Don’t worry.
Love and kisses,
Siouxsie
P.S. Email me at desperatelyseekingsomeadvice@gmail.com , I’ll always respond!