“So, what do you want to do when you are older?”
A question I am sure almost all of us have been asked numerous times. When you reach Grade 12 and all of a sudden everybody is asking, what degree do you want to pursue, what school do you want to go to, what do you want to do with that degree?
And when you walk off that graduation stage, you are expected to know the answers to all those questions. The reality is it is so insane to expect 18-year-old kids to know how they want their life to play out. It is stressful, and it is an insane amount of pressure to expect that. University is seen as a place for people to discover themselves and who they are as people, yet we expect people to come in pretty much already knowing all that? I mean, I don’t know about you, but the math ain’t mathing to me.
Typically, when you come to university, you have a degree picked out, and in some cases, classes picked based on a certain specialty you might be interested in. But what happens when you go to those classes, and you study that material, and it is just not what you want? Can you switch programs? Will you be judged for doing so? And what about the pressure that comes from feeling like you committed to the major, so you have to stick it out, because that is what everybody expects of you?
Unfortunately, this is the experience of numerous university students. When asked about her experience, second-year Forensic Psychology student Gem Ingram said that when she started university last fall, she felt an insane amount of pressure to “have it figured out.” To know that this is exactly what she wanted to do. A lot of this pressure stemmed from her parents and their desire for her to attend university, get a degree, and go down a set career path. She felt that this pressure sort of hit her in Grade 12, when everyone around her knew what they wanted to pursue and what career they wanted, and she did not. She had no idea what career she wanted, or what she saw herself doing. But the pressure from societal expectations pushed her into choosing a degree and school, and sticking with it, as opposed to changing her mind and exploring other options.
I think that leads to the idea that changing what you want to pursue is seen as a “failure” by society. You can walk into university convinced that you want to pursue one thing, and then overnight that changes. Maybe you took an elective course that made you extremely interested in a new subject. Maybe you make friends who are pursuing a different major, and after seeing what they are learning, you become interested in it. And the thing is, despite what society says, that is not a terrible thing. It is not a failure. In fact, it is the opposite. You are actually experiencing university for what it should be meant for. To find yourself. To figure out what you want. The career you imagined at 17 might not actually be what you want to do at 23.
Then comes the comparison aspect. I mean, hey, it’s 2026; I am sure we all know how normalized it is to compare ourselves to others, especially because of the huge social media presence amongst our generation. And when it comes to university, when we are surrounded by so many different kinds of people on different life paths, it’s easy to look at someone and be like, “Oh I wish I was as organized as them, they’ve got their entire life planned out.” But in reality, no one’s life path is going to be the same. Even if they are the same major, with the same classes, and the same desired career path, their journeys are still going to be unique to them. When asked about her experience, Ingram stated that she has 100% compared herself and her journey to those around her and still does. She feels like all her friends are set on a career and life path, and it makes her feel like she is behind because she is not.
The thing is, while yes, it may look like it from an outside perspective; the truth is those people might be in the same predicament as you. Maybe they feel the same way. Maybe they choose what they think they want, but they are consistently second-guessing themselves. You never know what someone else is thinking.
At the end of the day, the problem is not that we do not have our lives figured out or planned out, but rather that we are expected to. From 18-21 years old, we are expected to know exactly how we want our lives to go and that is absolutely insane. University should be a place to find out what we want to do and have the room to explore that. And even at that, by the end of it, it is still okay not to know. Maybe university is just the starting place, not the final product. I also want to emphasize that as hard as it may be to do so, you have no reason to compare yourself to other people’s journeys, and your journey is just as important as someone else’s, even if you do not feel that way. It is okay to not know. It is okay to still question if you are doing the right thing. You are still young; you still have time and try not to let anyone pressure you into feeling like you need to know everything now.
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