As anyone in this society will surely know- leaving home to begin your first year at university can be very exciting and very nerve-wracking, but finding the path you know you want to spend the rest of your life wandering down can be even more so. Driving down with your bags in the car, you’re so full of dreams and promise; with bright ideas and determination to excel no matter what. As I, personally, have discovered though, it’s not always that straight forward.
Your time in university is the place and the age during which you will form some of your biggest decisions and experiences. However, in my very limited experience of university thus far, I’ve discovered that it’s all too easy to allow other people’s dreams to cloud your own and to lose the path you were so sure you were set on. Stressing about careers is something every university student is familiar with, and it’s very easy to convince yourself that you’d be happy to put hours of study and then years of your life into a role you had never even considered- simply because you’ve allowed yourself to follow the crowd. It happened to me. I went to every talk, did my best to do all the things I was told would make me stand out on an application. Then I realised that this simply wasn’t for me. I felt no passion, no joy, and no motivation in the desire to go down this certain path. And that was okay.
I think it’s important to take a pause to really think: is this what I want? I’m, personally, a huge believer in if you want it, go get it, but I think it’s necessary sometimes to stop and triple check with yourself whether this want is going to last past the need you currently feel to compete with your peers. University is such a busy, impressive place and it can be exciting to allow yourself to be swept away by other people’s wants, ideas and (even your own) dreams of money. However, there are also SO many options, choices and opportunities available to you. I recently opened up to my friends about the stress and uncertainty I was feeling and I learned, to my relief, that they shared my doubts and worries too!
Navigating your path at uni and forging your own future is, of course, important. But it doesn’t have to be a source of huge stress. It’s so easy to alter your goals, or even stop and start focusing on a brand new goal, whilst you’re still at university with access to a myriad of opportunities and guidance. We shouldn’t be scared to do that. Neither should we be scared to pour our hearts into our true ambitions, whatever they are, whether they are mainstream, or even if they go against what is perhaps expected of us.
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