Photo Caption: It can often be overwhelming when trying to find your passions, with the concept of endless possibilities sounding more daunting than inspiring.
Take that life-changing trip to London on the off chance that you get noticed by a modeling agent! Drop out of college to pilot that start-up no one else thought of! Quit your boring cubicle job on a whim to become a fashion blogger! Through morals at the end of fables, character arcs in shows, and flashy movie montages, from a very young age everyone is taught the age-old idea of following your dreams.
While all of those ideas would’ve made amazing low-budget, early-2000s Barbie movies, they aren’t very realistic nowadays. As our time in high school comes to an end, reality has set in—feeling fulfilled emotionally at your job is nowhere near as important as stability and financial safety… or so they say.
Today, most people my age face a fork in the road when it comes to deciding their future. We’ve learned from our surroundings and environment that job security and earnings should play a vital role in choosing a career, but have also seen firsthand from our parents and work-life horror stories that feeling unsatisfied in your job can lead you to slowly but surely lose your lust for life and mental strength. So, like me, many young adults try to make a compromise. Carsten Wrosch, a psychology professor at Concordia University in Montreal, attributes this to goal adjustment capacity, a self-regulatory skill, which Psyche describes as, “[encapsulating] two key components: the ability to disengage from fruitless goals and the ability to reengage in new, more productive goals.”
Studies indicate that these two capacities act independently, meaning someone might be good at letting go but not at starting new projects, causing a sense of anxiety and regret as we hold on to what-ifs and what-could-have-beens, standing still and looking back in lieu of walking forward. It’s easier said than done to find a middle ground where you stay true to your heart while simultaneously trying to find a hyperspecific job you don’t groan at the thought of doing for the rest of your life that also pays well.
As someone who plans to go into literature and writing (sectors which are increasingly threatened by the prominence of AI) in a school populated to the brim with STEM students, NASA interns, and published researchers, planning out my future sounds harrowing, like a balancing act of passion and survival. However, it’s not impossible. It just takes a lot of Googling and sacrifice. Let’s say you want to go into baking but aren’t confident about pursuing a field with low profit margins, intense physical demands, growing burnout rates, demanding hours, and high turnover. Perhaps you could entertain the prospect of instead becoming a food scientist; although it’s certainly a completely different aesthetic and lifestyle, there is still a focus on recipes, shelf life, and production, with much more stable hours and a lab/office setting.
The Global Recruiter states that “A survey found that 92 per cent of people who ended up in their childhood dream job are happy in their job as an adult… Alternatively, 84 per cent of those who did not end up in their childhood dream are happy in their job, leaving twice the amount unhappy.” I feel as though the most crushing emotion in life is regret. Wishing you knew better or tried harder can haunt you till the very end, marring and dimming even your greatest moments of success. So I urge you to search. Fight to keep your enthusiasm alive and if you feel like there is no space for you, show up and create a seat for yourself at the table.
Sayana Settipalli, a junior at Washington High School, was born and raised in India before moving to Fremont in 2015. This is her first year at The Hatchet and she plans on writing about various topics, ranging from political science to digital media literacy. In school, she’s currently acting as Assistant Speech Captain in WHS Speech and Debate. Outside of school, she’s a committed member of both the Tri-City Action Team in Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action and Fremont Debate Academy. In her free time, Sayana enjoys reading and writing poetry, hanging out with her friends, creating graphic designs, practicing screenwriting, and watching movies - especially thrillers. After graduating high school, she hopes to major in a combination of English and education.