By Melanie Chapilliquen
My mother instilled these wise words in me by the time I was five years old: “Pick any job that you want, but you might as well be the best at whatever you chose to do.”
I’ve never been able to understand why people choose to study a major where they have to drag their feet to class every day.
With this in mind, it’s best if you actually enjoy whatever you’re learning about. There is no guarantee that just because you choose a major that pays well, you’ll secure employment. While a career is a long-term consideration when choosing a major, you may feel stuck surrounded by a subject that bores you or you have little to no interest in. As college students, we’re forced to take typical general requirements for math, science and so on. That’s thirty credits we are coerced to take before we get into the “good stuff.”
Not only do we have to take the classes, but we are sometimes also subjected to a teacher that genuinely bores the daylights out of us. A minute can seem like an endless hour, and by the time we leave the class, we most likely have no idea what went on. It isn’t to say that the teacher was unsatisfactory. You just didn’t care. That was one semester – imagine that for the next three years. You sit in classes listening to a teacher passionately speak about a subject while you yearn to be anywhere else.
School becomes a routine. You wake up, get to class, do homework and life becomes mundane. You no longer see the beauty in learning. You no longer appreciate the opportunity of higher education, no longer value that you attend a school focused on embracing diversity. NSU has thousands of students that take pride in having genuine interests in what they study. These are the students you see with smiles on their faces, whose sanity you question. You think no one could ever be that happy attending college. However, that’s the thing: it is possible to learn and find joy in the things you’re passionate about, and it’s an opportunity that needs to be taken advantage of.
You do your best work when it revolves around your passion. Whether you love art, science, dance or even criminal justice, there are thousands of other individuals competing for the same job opportunities.
That’s my point exactly – why not wake up every morning excited to learn something new while meeting people along the way instead of dreading the alarm clock? Money comes from successfully completing jobs. The more passionate an individual is about the job the better the result. Before you wake up dreading that 7 a.m. class that has you questioning your major, reflect: Is this really want I want to do for the rest of my life? Or would I rather have my sanity questioned because I actually enjoy waking up and learning about things I am passionate about?
