Pursuing passions | The Triangle

Pursuing passions

Unsplash.com
Unsplash.com

Every freshmen who survived their first term at Drexel let out a sigh of relief.

It hasn’t been easy, but we’ve adapted. We’ve made friends. We’ve ran to class late. We’ve experienced dorm life. We’ve even rode a dragon — well, some of us have at least.

But most importantly, we started forming the foundations for our futures.

It’s important to remember that our educations are our chances to follow our dreams, or at least, they should be. This is the time for us as young adults to take charge of our own lives. The only way to do this is to understand what we want in life.

If that’s a question you haven’t asked yourself yet, you have a lot of work to do.

There are Drexel students studying to be biologists, engineers and businesspeople, who haven’t yet come to the realization that this is not what they really want.

Some people are taking classes in subjects they find no personal value in and honestly, living a lie.

They think things like:I’m doing this because I know I can get a job in this field”; “this was the only thing that I was good at in high school”; “my parents told me that this would be great for me”; “having this job will make a lot of money.”

If any of these statements sound familiar, what you may fail to realize is that there is so much more to your education than the expectations of others or the promise of a great salary after you earn your degree.

What’s more, it’s going to take a lot more than one statement to get you through the next four to five grueling years of college.

You have to study something that you want to do. You should feel passionately about what you’re learning, or at least feel passionate about the work you will do once you graduate, because the fact of the matter is: if you’re pursuing a career and your heart isn’t into it, you’ll only go so far.

Don’t ever base your future on calculations made by others. Logistics are helpful in planning things out, but what’s the point if you don’t actually feel anything from the work you’re doing?

Even if you don’t know what you really love, you have to at least love what you learn. Ask yourself what your major really means to you, and discover what you’re ultimately going to do with the skills you learn here.

It took me a long time before I concluded that I want to major in film production. Although there’s always going to be the doubt that I could have done more if I followed my interest in biology, this has always been the one thing that I have loved doing. I have always had a passion for writing, and through that I want to tell stories through film.

My love for film has made this decision a lot easier. There’s nothing I want to do more and ultimately, everything in life is going to be a risk.

Granted, some things are larger risks than others, but undertaking a career that you love will always have a great reward.