Unhappy In Undergrad
Dear Siouxsie,
I’m in my first year of college, and I love everything except what I’m doing in school. My friends are great, my city is fun, and I have a job, but my major just doesn’t interest me anymore. (For reference I’m majoring in bioengineering.) My parents keep encouraging me to give it time, and that this period of difficulty will pass, but I don’t think it will. The lectures are boring, my teachers have little sympathy for me, and I just don’t like a single assignment we’re given. All my classmates seem to just get the material and turn in work with a sigh of relief, but I’m so confused that turning in work is more of a battle to the finish line: I’m struggling to hit deadlines in all of my classes. Every day, I wake up and wish I’d chosen a different major. The worst part is, I think I don’t want to go anywhere near bioengineering after this. I used to act a lot in high school theatre, but my parents cautioned me against a theatre major, so I chose the more stable path. I can’t risk throwing away all my plans for an acting major at a totally different school, even though I think I manage all of the money stuff. It just makes me too nervous, and I feel like I’m stuck in this terrible limbo. What should I do?
Sincerely,
Unhappy in Undergrad
Dear Unhappy in Undergrad,
I am incredibly incompetent at math, and science confuses the hell out of me, so I must say: props to you for choosing a major that sounds like my literal hell. I think a lot of people reading this blog are behind me when I say, “How in the actual fuck are you surviving?” The problem here I think is that you were caught in the crosshairs of your parents and what you actually want to do, and although I think it’s understandable and practical to choose bioengineering, it’s clearly not working out for you. You chose what you thought would benefit you most, and it’s hurting you a lot. It does sound like everything else is going right, and I’m sorry that you feel so confused and miserable. Sometimes life is like that, but you have to work past it, or nothing will ever change.
Let’s address the obvious here: this wasn’t your first choice. Your parents seem to be a little too involved in your life decisions, which can happen, and it’s understandable. I think what I’m also trying to say here is that you shouldn’t be blaming yourself as much as you think you should. But your parents aren’t here to make all of the hard or difficult choices for you forever. If that was what parents were meant to do, the human race would be a even more of a disaster. So I think now is the perfect time to set up some boundaries with your parents, which is a weird sentence, but it’s an important one. You deserve to be heard in situations that directly affect you and your life, and it sounds like they didn’t allow you that chance. However, to be fair, it is your responsibility to speak up for yourself, and while you can’t change the past, you can shape the future. You have the right to tell your parents that you want to be able to make your own, unbiased opinions about your life, and you have the right to be firm about it. Yes, they’re doing all of this because they care about you, but they also need to know when they’re doing too much.
The other lesson I think you can learn to take from this is to advocate for yourself. I’ve seen and heard a lot from friends recently that they’re struggling, and when I ask what’s wrong, they start by saying, “I wish…” or “I should…” and the problem with those statements is that means that they have the power or ability to alter their current situation that they’re unhappy with, but they don’t. Waiting for your environment to adapt to you (in most situations) is about as helpful as those life hack videos your aunt keeps liking on Facebook. Occasionally, they’ve happened to help, or the video has stuck in your mind for whatever reason, but really, what is that accomplishing? The answers you’re looking for are probably already in your head, but you don’t like the idea of being proactive to accomplish your goals. Trust me, I get it, and it’s definitely easier said than done. The idea of having complicated or difficult tasks isn’t fun, but then again the idea or expectation is almost always worse than the outcome.
The other day, I was talking to a senior at my school, and they said something really important that stuck with me. We were talking about the unrealistic and often overhyped ideals of college, and she said, “I really think that when it all comes down to it, college is just a fancy way of saying ‘grown-up high school.’ People think that college is the be-all-end-all, but it’s really just another stepping stone to the future.” It kind of blew my mind. When we were in elementary school, all the teachers told us about how they were preparing us for the difficulties of middle school. When we were in middle school, all the teachers would talk about is how we were preparing for high school. And in high school, teachers constantly remind us of the pressure of college. (Or at least it can feel that way). There’s a future-centric pressure and focus on whatever’s next in education, and that’s okay, because school is meant to prepare you for your life, but the problem is that with that mindset, it creates a lot of dangerously oversimplified conversations that don’t necessarily take into account what its audiences are going through individually. College is both individualistic and incredibly collectivist. Life is an oxymoron. Go figure.
Stop making your life in 5 (or 10 or 20 or 30) years your main focus. Yes, it’s important to think ahead, but the place where you’re at right now, Unhappy in Undergrad, you’re trying to set everything up so that your future is secured. The issue is that you’re also forgetting the present, which also needs your attention. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m a little lonely and over contemplative right now, but live for a second. You love your parents, I’m sure, but what about you? Acting sounds like it would give you a lot of joy. What’s the point of life if you’re working your entire life towards something that’s just not giving you any joy? It’s worth it to pursue what’s giving you joy. And if you can’t continue studying bioengineering, then just fucking don’t. I think you’ve given this a lot of thought. You can give it some more if you want, but don’t wallow in this limbo of uncertainty and unhappiness purely because you’re scared. Tell the fear to shut the fuck up. Switching colleges is a totally viable option that a lot more people take then we think we do. Don’t feel alone in this decision. I’ve been trying to find a complex and intelligent quote to end this response with, but I think I’m just gonna keep it simple: sometimes you just gotta say “what the fuck.” There is very much a pun intended when I say what you’re doing is risky business. But so is everything else. It’s a leap of faith, but you have to have faith in yourself, if nothing else.
Love and kisses,
Siouxsie
P.S. Email me at desperatelyseekingsomeadvice@gmail.com so that I can send you more vaguely useful ramblings from my brain!