Summertime, Summertime Panic About My Future
Because it's summer, and the nice structured life of going to university every week is gone, and I'm always incredibly fundless in July, I'm spending a lot of time in my head. Besides the usual identity crises and disruptive intrusive thought patterns I'm racking my brain for dissertation ideas and trying to find an answer to the ever present "what will I do after uni" question.
It feels like just a few weeks ago I was writing on this blog about what I wanted to do with my life after graduating the IB, and here I am in the summer before my 4th and final year in university. A lot of my friends have their plans, are writing their applications and preparing for applying to various places. I'm absolutely shitting it.
I have no clue what I want to do after university, except that I want to move away from Scotland. That's not hugely useful when thinking about a solid future, but up until now my plan had been to teach in Korea. After my trip I realised I wouldn't last a month there with my current capacities as a person so I've had to scrap that and start fresh.
The thing is, it's difficult to decide what to do when everything requires you to know yourself at least a little bit. Job applications look for specific attributes and passions, and I have no idea what kind of person I am. Am I hardworking? Kind? Creative? I have no idea. Every time something new happens to me I react in a way I could not have predicted and it's thrown my whole sense of self completely out of whack. The thing about having a passion is that it's very hard to fake it, and I usually have about a 3-6 month interest in various things before I get bored, so summoning enough to get a job in something I'd be doing for a lot longer than that seems impossible.
Sure, I'm interested in a lot of things like editing and writing and working on a film set or making music videos, but do I really know how to do any of those things well enough? Better than thousands of others? Probably not. I just want to find something that I can do and will want to do for a long time, and that's asking for the world.
Currently the plan I'm telling people when they ask me is that I'll move to Canada seeing as I have a citizenship and there's a whole side to my cultural roots that I haven't explored. However, I don't think it matters where you live if you end up just working at a coffee shop for years. I'd love to believe in the dream that I'll work at some restaurant or another and then find the perfect job opportunity and somehow rise to the occasion and find my career and succeed amazingly. But that's not super likely, and thinking about spending a lot of money to essentially immigrate to another country (while already being over 20,000€ in debt) with no clear prospects is terrifying.
The thing is there's lots of things I'd love to try out, but they are things that you need to climb the ladder to try out. Doing two or more years of really shitty work just to see if I like being an editor, or working as a production assistant for ages and then seeing if I like being any position higher than that on a film set both seem like options that have a lot of risk involved. I know, this whole "kids these days don't know how to work for something" way of thinking is probably bleeding through a bit, but I'm just really hesitant about wasting my time. I'm only 22 but I feel like time is running out on finding out what I want to be and do with my life. In a year's time I'll be stepping out of the cycle of constant education I've been since I was 7-years old and I don't know how to survive without a structure like that.
For now it's enough for me to look at entry level jobs in journalism, media editing and production assistant work, but the closer I get to graduating the more the panic will rise. If I was good enough to be a director or had enough ideas and skills to be a screenwriter I would totally chase those dreams, but I have no confidence that my skills are better than anyone else's, and I think in order to succeed in those fields especially as a newbie you have to have some blind faith in yourself.
Anyway. I understand that you need to work hard for what you want. But I don't know what I want, and I'm scared of wasting time working for something that at the end of the day will not be what I wanted after all.
The only real goal I have right now, and have had for years, is that I want to write a book. Whether that be fiction or poetry or something else, I don't know. What I do know is that you can't spend hours every day writing a book and still pay the rent. At least I know I'll be looking back at this post in a few years having found out some of the answers, and hopefully, maybe in 10 years, having written a book.
Thanks for reading my internal struggles,
Rebecca
It feels like just a few weeks ago I was writing on this blog about what I wanted to do with my life after graduating the IB, and here I am in the summer before my 4th and final year in university. A lot of my friends have their plans, are writing their applications and preparing for applying to various places. I'm absolutely shitting it.
I have no clue what I want to do after university, except that I want to move away from Scotland. That's not hugely useful when thinking about a solid future, but up until now my plan had been to teach in Korea. After my trip I realised I wouldn't last a month there with my current capacities as a person so I've had to scrap that and start fresh.
The thing is, it's difficult to decide what to do when everything requires you to know yourself at least a little bit. Job applications look for specific attributes and passions, and I have no idea what kind of person I am. Am I hardworking? Kind? Creative? I have no idea. Every time something new happens to me I react in a way I could not have predicted and it's thrown my whole sense of self completely out of whack. The thing about having a passion is that it's very hard to fake it, and I usually have about a 3-6 month interest in various things before I get bored, so summoning enough to get a job in something I'd be doing for a lot longer than that seems impossible.
Sure, I'm interested in a lot of things like editing and writing and working on a film set or making music videos, but do I really know how to do any of those things well enough? Better than thousands of others? Probably not. I just want to find something that I can do and will want to do for a long time, and that's asking for the world.
Currently the plan I'm telling people when they ask me is that I'll move to Canada seeing as I have a citizenship and there's a whole side to my cultural roots that I haven't explored. However, I don't think it matters where you live if you end up just working at a coffee shop for years. I'd love to believe in the dream that I'll work at some restaurant or another and then find the perfect job opportunity and somehow rise to the occasion and find my career and succeed amazingly. But that's not super likely, and thinking about spending a lot of money to essentially immigrate to another country (while already being over 20,000€ in debt) with no clear prospects is terrifying.
The thing is there's lots of things I'd love to try out, but they are things that you need to climb the ladder to try out. Doing two or more years of really shitty work just to see if I like being an editor, or working as a production assistant for ages and then seeing if I like being any position higher than that on a film set both seem like options that have a lot of risk involved. I know, this whole "kids these days don't know how to work for something" way of thinking is probably bleeding through a bit, but I'm just really hesitant about wasting my time. I'm only 22 but I feel like time is running out on finding out what I want to be and do with my life. In a year's time I'll be stepping out of the cycle of constant education I've been since I was 7-years old and I don't know how to survive without a structure like that.
For now it's enough for me to look at entry level jobs in journalism, media editing and production assistant work, but the closer I get to graduating the more the panic will rise. If I was good enough to be a director or had enough ideas and skills to be a screenwriter I would totally chase those dreams, but I have no confidence that my skills are better than anyone else's, and I think in order to succeed in those fields especially as a newbie you have to have some blind faith in yourself.
Anyway. I understand that you need to work hard for what you want. But I don't know what I want, and I'm scared of wasting time working for something that at the end of the day will not be what I wanted after all.
The only real goal I have right now, and have had for years, is that I want to write a book. Whether that be fiction or poetry or something else, I don't know. What I do know is that you can't spend hours every day writing a book and still pay the rent. At least I know I'll be looking back at this post in a few years having found out some of the answers, and hopefully, maybe in 10 years, having written a book.
Thanks for reading my internal struggles,
Rebecca
Comments
Post a Comment