Two days ago I had lunch with my roommate from freshman year and we got to talking about what we wanted to do with our lives (cue the alarm bells!). She's in the science program at the school we go to (McMaster University) and was going back and forth between becoming a optometrist (a couple more years of school) or a dermatologist (a lot more years of school). She felt that she was taking the "easy" way out by looking into optometry as it takes less time to complete in graduate school. Her other problem was that she felt that she wasn't truly passionate about anything. There wasn't that one thing that she could see herself doing for the rest of her life.
I feel that I'm in a similar boat, except I have too many passions!
This whole discussion got me thinking, what am I going to do with my life? As an English major, Communications major, and philosophy minor (I know), I could basically do anything. But what? From my first year up until the present I've been going back and forth between intellectual property lawyer, PR person, a job in publishing, knowledge management, and human rights law. For these past few weeks I've been researching grad schools looking at law programs, media programs, everything in between, and not really feeling drawn to anything. Nothing was what I was looking for. But what was I looking for? I had no clue.
Then I came back to journalism. A field that I had written off even before giving it a chance. I don't know why, I just never saw myself as "Myia Kelly, Journalist". I think I was (and still am) scared to have my work under such scrutiny. I believe, however, that it's time for me to grow a pair (excuse my French). I write all the time for school anyways, right?. I think I'm decent at it, and it's the only thing I get asked for help with from peers and friends. I'm thinking maybe I can do this. And this way, I might just be able to combine a few of my passions by perhaps writing about world politics or some form of cultural reporting (program at NYU!).
I'm very excited about working toward my new life goal (for now). Next year I'm going to attempt writing for the school paper and see what happens. Wish me luck!
