"It isn't like you aren't employable...you're a physics major!!"

 

Getting a job does seems like the simplest and safest path, but that is not how I want to live my life, just taking the path of least resistance.  This is not to say that I will never take a "job", or that getting a good job will be easy.  I just don't think that I know right now what sort of job is best for me or the world, and I think instead of folding to pressure from my peers, parent and other well-wishers, I need to follow my heart, hit the road, and explore the world a bit more before I stop and set my roots.  

 

Some people may know exactly what they want to do, and more power to them, but I don't, and I refuse to jump into yet another structure.  When I think back upon my life, I have had some freedom, but I have had a lot of structure too.  For 16+ years I have been working through institutional education!!  And there is freedom in that: you go home at the end of the day, and you have weekends, and summers, and even within classes you get to choose your essay topics and some of the books you read.  But at this point, I am hungry for more unstructured self-direction and freedom.  I want to read what I want to read, and write the things that I want to write.  

 

I think SO MANY PEOPLE spend their whole lives working through a structure, a system that has been proven to "work", to lead to (monetary) success, so that some day we can sit back and live the way we want to live.  But I worry that so much structured time doesn't leave a chance for people to learn what they actually want, what they actually like to do, how they would actually like live.  And I think this can be seen in all the anxiety and depression and drug use rampant even amongst those who have "made it" and should now be able to "live the way they want to live".

 

Money doesn't buy happiness.  We have all heard this, but I don't think we all have really internalized it.  I see so many sacrifices in lifestyle being made in the pursuit of career development and part of this seems reasonable, but I think a lot of us lose ourselves along the path.   

 

So my plan is to try something else.  To take the path less travelled.  To resist the urge to jump into a tried and true path to fulfillment.  Because I seriously question that these more socially accepted routes lead to where a lot of people think they lead.  At least with the road, I know that it could lead anywhere!

​