What I am Going to do With my Life

By Giuliana Rodriguez / Fall 2020

Dear Giuliana,

There was a moment in my senior year of high school where I distinctly remember having a small panic attack about college. I was in my mom’s apartment alone, sitting on the edge of my bed, doing some finishing touches on my UC application, and I remember thinking, “I’m not going to get in.” I had wanted to go into biology and UC San Diego was my top school, but as I was sitting there with the warm glow of the lamp beside me and my computer screen being the only sources of light in the room, I just began to cry. I cried for who knows how long because I knew, I just knew, that even though I had worked so hard, paid so much money for exams and applications, and spent so much of my time in applying, I was going to be rejected. But it was not just this feeling of rejection, it was more the feeling of oh my god, what I am going to do with my life?

To my younger self, I say to you, do not conform to society’s expectations of having your whole life figured out at the age of 18. This preconceived notion that you need to choose one career to work in for the rest of your life until you die is created by old white men whose only goal in life is to make enough money for retirement. Your parents might lecture you about hard work and being financially stable, and more so, your dad will continuously tell you that you should be a doctor because “they make so much money!” And all through high school, college, and later on in your twenties, you will feel this immense pressure that you need to have your life together and that by the age of 30, you should be married, start having kids, have a 401k, and so on. But this is exactly the problem. How are we supposed to come out of high school, where a second ago we had to ask for permission to use the bathroom, and then be expected to act like adults with no room for mistakes? This is not realistic.

To that girl, sitting in her room, crying about the possibility of not being accepted into your first college choice, you will be fine! Just live your life, have fun being young, and one day, you will find what you are looking for. And let me tell you, in a few short years, you will have the amazing opportunity to attend UC San Diego on your own terms. And you know how you did it? You went against society’s norms and took your own route in getting a degree. The education system is heavily flawed, and once you start to realize that, you will find that there are other things in life that you will value more than a simple letter grade. Of course, education is important and will broaden your ideas and motivations in so many ways, but it should not be your only priority. I mean, I am 20 years old and I still don’t know what I want to do with my life, and that is okay!                       

Eventually, after many failed attempts, you will come to the harsh realization that you cannot plan everything in your life because you never know what tomorrow brings. For instance, I thought I was going to leave home after high school and have a fresh new life, but I ended up staying home for two more years. And just last year, I wanted to be a mechanical engineer, and now I am majoring in economics. You just don’t know what is going to happen and if you waste your time trying to fulfill society’s expectations, you will never find happiness. And yes, you might see your friends around you post on social media about how well they are doing and how “awesome” their life is, but that is their life, and this is yours. You are your own human being and if you want to do whatever it is you want to do a bit differently, then do it. If you want to take things slow, take a gap year, maybe travel, and meet new people, then no one is stopping you. Something I tell myself when I start to get stressed about the smallest problem is that it always works out in the end. So, keep your head up, enjoy life, and don’t put yourself down about not knowing what you are doing half the time because in all honesty, no one does.