Earlier this week, I received an email that may or may not determine the rest of my path through life.
“Congratulations, your concentration has been approved. Please contact your concentration advisor if you have any questions.”
And there’s my name in bolded letters. Followed by the words “A.B.” and “English.”
When I read over these words, a weird wave of relief actually washed over me. As a former Computer Science concentrator who’d spent the better part of this year having no idea what they would do instead, finding my concentration has been an emotional roller coaster filled with several existential crises.
What if I become a starving artist? What if I can’t get a job that lets me splurge on that seven-dollar smoothie once in a while? What if, God forbid, I have to live somewhere that isn’t New York?
The thing is, these are legitimate worries. But then there’s the other side of it, too. What if I chose my path for all the wrong reasons? All of us, we only want to be happy and it’s so hard to know what is going to make that happen. At twenty years old, I sure as hell do not know what I want to do with my life or what job I want to get. I know what I don’t want to do: law, medicine, finance. I know that I want to work “in a creative field.” Do I know what that even means? Barely.
Spring semester rolls around and seniors start talking jobs, getting that wistful look in their eyes as they talk about leaving us behind for the “real world.” It fucking stresses me out.
According to Brown’s website, “Alumni with a concentration in English have gone on to work in immigration and other types of law, journalism, business, technology consulting, counseling psychology, policy analysis, and in a variety of arts and entertainment industries.”
And I read these words and I feel a little better to hear about these adults out in the real world, these adults who have done what I’ve done and lived to tell the tale. Graduates who have gotten real jobs and are probably living their lives and doing just fine.
I have faith that I’ll make it through. I have to believe that this isn’t an ultimatum, the all-deciding factor of the rest of my existence. At the end of the day, it’s just another label, right?
You, too, will be okay.
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