I woke up after three hours of sleep. I decided to go to the park and read but I don’t know why I bothered. It was so hot by the time I got there I only got about 20 pages in before I went back home. The discussion around authorship of The Heptaméron is fascinating; I’ll be looking more into it later.
i feel like the most important piece of wisdom i can impart on teenagers is that no one–no one–knows what the fuck they’re doing
my brother is 26 years old, makes $200k a year, and just bought a house with his fiance. he’s the success story you hear about but never actually meet in person, but it all happened by accident. he wanted to go to college for clarinet performance, but he got rejected from all the top schools. so he decided to major in physics instead, and then went on to get a doctorate to put off being an adult for a few more years. but then he ended up dropping out halfway through the program and accepting a job with google as a software engineer. so to reiterate: my brother majored in something he was not interested in, and then he got a job that had nothing to do with his degree.
he isn’t successful because he had some master plan he followed, he just stumbled around blindly until something worked out. and that’s what we’re all doing–i majored in political science and now i do customer service for a company that makes industrial-sized gas detection monitors. the marketing director at my company has a degree in biology, and my mom has an MBA and works at a middle school. no one knows what they’re doing, we’re all just trying different things until something works out.
so if you don’t have a plan, that’s fine. most of us don’t. and even those of us who do, don’t usually end up doing the thing they thought they would. it’s okay to relax and let life carry you wherever it’s gonna carry you. because even though a lot of us don’t end up doing the thing we wanted, most of us end up happy anyway.
I’ve been thinking about this post since I made it a few hours ago, and I realized that I literally don’t know anyone who’s doing what they thought they’d be doing at this point in their life. I know a girl that has a degree in neuroscience and works in a restaurant (and makes quite a bit more money than I do, might I add), and a guy who wanted to be a parole officer but is now a security guard. I know people who wanted to be lawyers but ended up not having the grades for law school. I have a friend who’s 24 and just finished her bachelor’s, and two friends who decided to go to grad school because the idea of joining the adult world terrified them.
When I was seventeen, I was 100% sure that I was going to get a job as a bureaucrat and save the world. When I was a 21-year-old recent college grad, I found out that it’s impossible to get a government job unless you know someone. So I gave up and found something else. I know my teenage self would be disappointed if she could see where I’m at, but you know what? I don’t care. Because teenage me was an idiot. She didn’t know anything about the world or how it worked, and she couldn’t have possibly predicted the curveballs that life would throw at her. And because I don’t know a single person who’s doing the thing they wanted to do when they were teenagers.
I know a thousand people who aren’t where they thought they’d be, and zero people who are following the path they set out for themselves. All of us are confused and all of us are scared, and it’s okay if you are too.
Honestly thank u, i needed to hear this again
i wanted to add some stories to this!! because its true! no one has any idea, or doesnt realize they have no idea until they’re way in
my dad got a bachelors in chemistry, then applied to a master’s program specifically to work with one professor. after he accepted, he found out that the professor wasnt teaching that program anymore. he finished his degree, said fuck this, i dont want to work in a laboratory, and went to law school instead to practice patent law and adores every aspect of his career. probably never would have happened if that one professor had stayed to teach.
my aunt didn’t have the chance at college when she was younger because her relationship with education (and being poor) just wasn’t conducive to higher ed. now she’s 35, married with 3 kids, and halfway through an associates degree to be a medical tech (and one of the top students in the class), because she realized adult-her was more compatible with college than teenage-her
my uncle was (weirdly enough) so highly experienced that he kept getting laid off from/leaving major companies because they couldnt/wouldnt pay the proper salary for a man of his skill level. eventually, he said fuck that and went back to school to get his doctorate, then a few years later got a job as a professor of business admin/marketing and he’s really really good at it
and even the people you think have linear paths, good news: they dont. my mom grew up in the german education system, and knew from hs she wanted to be a lawyer. went all the way through the law course in uni, then immigrated to the us to go to an american law school. she got a job at a private firm doing translations from german to english (i think??) and when her contract there ended, moved to doing government work in a completely different field. i have no idea what she studied specifically at university, if at all. so even tho on the outside she looks perfectly linear, she really wasnt
education & career paths are not linear ! everyone has weird little twists and turns and some funky loops ! some peoples are just much larger and more noticeable! but please don’t think “that person has their shit together and i dont T_T” because i promise you they’re probably thinking the same thing about themselves
☀️ I changed uni courses. Now doing a Bachelor of Heath Science, majoring in Food & Nutrition with a focus on Community Health & Menu Planning
☀️ I managed to tear my ATFL ligament, again, and the ultrasound had some worrying results. I’ve been diagnosed with a ‘chronic condition’ and now have to get regular physiotherapy. This may end up resulting in me having to quit my job and it most certainly put my return to theatre on the back burner
☀️ I spent quarantine really trying to sit down and have a conversation with myself about what I want to achieve going forward.
☀️ I’m definitely going to get this blog up and running again so don’t be shy, come and say hi!
