I ended up attending Boston University because I wasn’t accepted anywhere else. Was I smart, intelligent, ambitious? I’m not sure about the last one but I was a hard worker or rather a hard-working student. That’s actually all I knew how to do. Study and study hard.
When trying to pick which colleges to apply to I listened to whatever my dad suggested. We chose a couple schools in Maine (one of his favorite places in the world) and a couple near home in Boston. I did apply to Bryn Mawr, an all girls school as well, not understanding why it would be attractive beyond the gorgeous campus.
Most of us are not allowed to make major life decisions growing up so when we finally do get the choice to choose—or rather, are flung to the other extreme and forced to make a major life decision (and told that our college and area of study will influence our entire future— srsly?) with no support or help thinking about what it is that we’re looking for—it shouldn’t be a surprise that we are completely and totally lost. We were never asked what we wanted before. And now we’re suddenly forced to make a decision, alone, that will directly affect our future. WTF?
And now we come to the decision of what to choose for work. We’ve been living the “protected” life of a student, so they say—where one out of every four women on college campuses will be raped or sexually assaulted before they graduate— and now we’re facing the workforce with, again, no formal training or support or direction as to what it all means. What can one do with an international relations or political science major or a women’s studies major? How does one get from here to there?
My two major choices I recall in my early twenties were: corporate or non-corporate. And I was pretty clear as to what I wanted. I had been an activist since having fallen into young people’s empowerment work as a teenager and had never left my activist core. However, a recent girlfriend’s question made me rethink the question of how to choose one’s work, especially as an activist and especially as a young adult.
Yes, I think it’s important for us to do what we care about and what we’re passionate about. At the same time, it’s important to explain to young adults that it’s OK to not give into family or friends’ expectations and pressures. For example, it would be OK to check out higher-paying/corporate jobs if you have always worked in the nonprofit world. It’s understandable that you’d like to be able to pay rent next month and buy nice clothes at the same time. Simultaneously, if your folks always assumed you’d go into corporate, “just like everyone else,” and you always were curious about exploring your activism interests, that would be OK too. Family expectations are one of the hardest things to break away from and say no to. However, the earlier you start the better. Trust me.
