By Ms. Rebecca Leung, English Teacher

On a daily basis, I walk around campus and see students who look like they are carrying the weight of the world in their backpacks.  If you are one of these students, you are undoubtedly feeling the pressure from all sides to go to college, especially from parents who say your life will be ruined if you don’t attend “University XYZ” or that you must join the workforce as a member of the distinguished profession of their choice.  As a teacher, I encourage each of you to make the choices that are best for you in regards to college and your eventual career.  Being an adult means making your own decisions, defining your own life, and being your own person.  Sometimes this means going against what your parents want.  Here are some of the things your parents and relatives might have not told you, in the form of stories about people I’ve known and my own personal college experience.

Study what you love – you’ll probably end up there anyway. My cousin earned her degree in Psychology from UC Berkeley after being pressured by her parents to abandon her dream of being a chef to study something prestigious and academic.  After some negative experiences working in the field of child psychology, she took a different route and accepted a series of retail jobs.  After a few years, she had a great position at Gymboree Corporate and was making great money and traveling to Asia on a regular basis.  However, at age 38, she decided that she was tired of the corporate world and wanted to go back to culinary school and live out her lifelong dream of becoming a chef.  She is making less money but is far happier doing what she loves.

Turn a failure into success. I had a classmate who went to UC Davis with big dreams of becoming a computer programmer for Apple Computers.  As a kid who had been writing programs since the age of eleven, it seemed like it would be fairly straightforward for him to do well in Computer Science.  He got caught up in his social life, stopped going to class and studying, and ended up getting kicked out.  He enrolled at CSM and began working at a computer store and began a computer repair service for Macs.  In doing so, he gained work experience and made some extra money.  From there, he transferred to SF State, eventually applying for and getting an internship at Apple Computers in Cupertino.  Although it took him an extra year to earn his degree in Computer Science, he managed to do so, in addition to snagging the dream job he could not have gotten if he had stayed in Davis.

It’s not all about the name. I knew a high school valedictorian who scored perfectly on his SAT’s and then in turn, a full ride scholarship to Harvard.  While there, he received C and D grades, his first low grades ever.  After he graduated, he came back to the Bay Area and got hired to do data entry at eBay.  The job was one that he could have gotten as a high school graduate.  Having a degree from Harvard didn’t guarantee him anything —  the job didn’t pay that well, he had lousy hours, and on top of that, he still had trouble getting dates!  Just because you get accepted into a given school doesn’t mean that a fantastic job (or anything else) will be waiting in the wings when you graduate.

Taking on a job simply for your parents’ sake is the surest path to misery. For her entire life, my best friend has wanted to be a doctor.  As a little girl, she didn’t have access to health insurance and had to suffer being ill without medical care.  When she was a teenager, she died in a car accident and was brought back to life with CPR.  As a resident in her last year of medical school, she has an extremely demanding schedule.  There are weeks where she works 100 hours, often operating on no longer than three or four hours of sleep at a time.  She has missed countless holidays with her family, does laundry at three in the morning, has had several important relationships fall apart, and had to work in the same hospital where her stepmother was dying of cancer.  She is a quarter of a million dollars in debt and will not start her first “real job” until after she completes a fellowship next year.  There have been times where she has wanted to quit medical school … until she remembers why she is there in the first place.

Now imagine going through all these terrors and imagine that you only became a doctor because it is what your parents wanted for you.  My friend has worked with these doctors and she says that in addition to being exhausted and grumpy like she is, that these doctors are absolutely miserable.  Their workload is demanding and they have to make countless sacrifices for years before they actually receive a reasonable paycheck.

Now imagine the unfortunate patients who have to see these doctors and how their quality of care may fall short.
Remember you may spend up to fifty years or more working in the same career.  It should be something that inspires you on a daily basis.  Everyday may not be good, but most days should be enjoyable and challenge you in a way that helps you grow as an individual.

The next installment will be published in our next issue. Until then, post your thoughts and discuss them here.