When I ask my parents about their twenties, they tell me about their adventures around the world, working in jobs that definitely didn’t fill their resumes or their pockets. They guided whitewater rafting trips, waited tables and taught tourists how to fish. They lived cheaply and didn’t even enter serious, money-making careers until their 30s. When I hear these stories, I can’t help but feel like the possibility of gallivanting around the globe and living off of pennies is slipping into the past, where only older generations could enjoy it.
It feels like the expectation of a college graduate is to become a real adult immediately, constantly building your career. I experience a mounting feeling of dread that I may fall behind if I embark on opportunities like the ones my parents did. I ask myself this question: is it a waste of an education to not enter the rat-race to try my hand at the American dream?
This topic is controversial, and it’s unclear if this common ideal is backed by fact. Many young adults feel that they are financially worse off than their parents, which if proven, would be the first time in recent history that a generation has a worse quality of life than the one before. Generation Z is buying homes and reaching financial independence much later than previous generations. Although Gen Z is more likely to get a college degree and work full-time jobs, student loans and the housing affordability crisis are an enormous burden.
This statistic aligns with the increasing financial stress I feel as I get older, which may be explained by natural maturing, but I feel escalating pressure to do the financially “smart” thing regardless.
This weight on my conscience comes to a head when I tell relatives and family friends my plan to major in journalism. Their faces inevitably fall, quickly covered up with the polite “smile-and-nod.” That pressure balloons when I see that ZipRecruiter states that a staggering 87 percent of journalism graduates regret their major. It reaches a breaking point when people tell me the industry of journalism as a whole is crumbling into a toxic, dying popularity contest.
In a conversation I had with my mom, she said that when she was in college, there was an atmosphere of hope and encouragement — young people were told they could be whatever they want. Whatever they set their mind to could come to fruition. Is it possible for our generation to still display this risk-tolerance?
Now, students are pushed to choose an option that works as a financial safety net, a major that will earn a benchmark amount of money that can pay the bills.
In the humanities especially, it is frustrating to enter college with people constantly voicing these doubts into your ear. It is already hard enough to decide on a major without constant apprehension by your loved ones that you’re choosing the life of a “starving artist” permanently. The stakes feel so high — you must choose a discipline that can’t be replaced with AI, you must pick something that is immune to the market crashing, you must decide on something that could survive a potential pandemic. You must pursue something that somehow impossibly predicts the future.
Ignore this conflicting noise. Be ambitious and confident in your passions so that you dictate how successful you are instead of the subject you study. Don’t get sucked into the supposed “logical” path that will bring you success.
