I’ve spent most of the past semester and a half doing homework and eating, homework and shitting, homework and sleeping. I look at my classmates and friends who are smarter than me, and a wave of guilt hits me — what if I had dedicated myself more in high school? Why didn’t I?
Growing up, I did four different martial arts, three instruments, and two sports. I tried starting a Minecraft YouTube channel, really committed to it, and learned how to edit videos and make thumbnails. I started learning Russian, then stopped. Learned a bit of French, but don’t really speak it. Did robotics, then didn’t. Made pottery, made bracelets, made a router. None of that seems to have gone anywhere.
I often see influencers who build their entire account out of building terrariums or playing piano. They are living proof that you can make a living off of anything these days — as long as you’re good enough and privileged enough to pursue it. In comparison, all these hobbies and interests, miscellaneous skills of mine, all these fragments — they just felt like exactly that. Fragments, not of a whole, no. But a piece from here, a piece from there, bits and pieces of passion thrown all over the floor like dirty laundry.
***
I came into college wanting to major in at least eight different things, and in an attempt to piece together my fragments, I settled on two: math and physics. But this whole semester I’ve spent grinding painfully everyday just to understand less and do worse than those people who simply prioritized one thing early on. What am I even doing? Why did I even pick these majors? What if it was just an impulsive choice, no different from when I wanted to be a doctor or when I wanted to learn the cello? Oh god, how am I going to survive grad school? I thought about switching to something crazy and completely different, like why not film media or journalism? Or maybe I should take a gap year and join the Shaolin Temple? Travel a bit and see what it’s like to work at different places? Maybe I could write or make videos about it?
These thoughts aren’t really realistic, though, are they? It’s a bit too late to switch my major, and probably not a good idea, either. But how can I just let go of all these dreams I have? How do I choose between doubling down on a path that’s making me miserable and being way too late to every other path I could’ve gone? Sigh, I should’ve just committed to one thing from the start.
***
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” — Annie Dillard
I met Eddie a few months ago on a plane. He was coming back from a trans-Asiatic tour with his partner, and I was fortunate enough to spend the plane ride chatting with him. Eddie was a machine learning researcher at Microsoft. He studied musical theatre in college, then moved to New York to become a Broadway actor, toured for a couple of years, then went back to school for a master’s. One serendipitous job led to another: New York delivery startup, webmaster for a satellite company in D.C., designer for some ATM and airport kiosk interfaces, then his current job.
When he first told me all this, I was like, whaat —
I didn’t know that was something one could do?
In any case, it seemed like Eddie would be the last person to worry about not having stuck to one thing, which is why I went to him for advice.
I called Eddie and explained my situation. He very quickly picked out that I was anxious about what I wanted to do postgraduation, and that I felt isolated from my friends due to all the busy work.
Had I picked something else and committed to it, would I feel happier and more competent? Shouldn’t I pick something now?
He told me that it doesn’t matter what degree (he majored in communications) I get, and reminded me that people can still try out new things halfway through their majors and even decades into their working lives. He told me that I didn’t have to decide right now whether or not I wanted to go to graduate school, even though that had always been my plan. Actually, he argued, ideally I would go out and live life a bit before I commit to a Ph.D.
The thought of going into the world after college is terrifying. Having spent the last 14 years in school, I’ve gotten used to the comfort and predictability of class and homework. But he was right. You can’t survive a math or physics Ph.D. program unless you love your research and your field — and I just don’t have that yet.
He then told me about a woman he knew who was very busy but who had a million dreams she wanted to fulfill, whose strategy was to take the smallest possible version of that dream each year, every year, and make that come true.
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
Something clicked in my head — if I spend every day doing what I’ve done the past semester, then that’s how I’ll have spent my life. That’s what was scary to me. But if I spend each day chasing down even a tiny fraction of my dreams, then although that dream won’t necessarily come true, at least I’ll have explored the possibility.
It sounds obvious, but I used to try things as a kid, and I can still try things — it’s never too late to start a new hobby. And declaring a major doesn’t dictate the rest of my life. So much attention is placed on “career readiness” that it feels like we had to lock in our choices … yesterday? Even though most of us are barely adults.
In trying new things, whether that’s starting a hobby, living in a new city or taking an acting class I don’t “need,” I would get to meet new people and learn new things. Even if I were 60 years old, I’d still love to meet people who value different things in life, who are playing a slightly different game — people who are “differently free.”
The day I stop meeting new people will be my last. Because finding people who are differently free isn’t about finding people who are better than me at what I already know. It’s about discovering new frameworks for approaching life. I want them to turn over rocks I’d never thought to look under, instead of showing me how big of a rock they can carry. In some ways, I need these people as life-sized reminders that there’s an infinitude of ways to live, and that’s something to be in awe of.
***
I hung up the phone with Eddie and packed my stuff up to go home. I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but I did remember that I don’t get to choose what sparks my interest, so it would be putting the cart before the horse to try to decide what I wanted to be good at.
Depending on what you value in life — what kind of game you’re playing — specializing (especially prematurely) can be a hindrance. I remembered reading an essay by VC founder Paul Graham. In “Before The Startup”, he says:
“Be a real student and not start a startup, or start a real startup and not be a student? I can answer that one for you. Do not start a startup in college. How to start a startup is just a subset of a bigger problem you’re trying to solve: how to have a good life. And though starting a startup can be part of a good life for a lot of ambitious people, age 20 is not the optimal time to do it. Starting a startup is like a brutally fast depth-first search. Most people should still be searching breadth-first at 20.”
Starting a company is a risky thing, and so is locking in on a single passion. There are some people for whom it makes sense to hedge their bets because, for one reason or another, they have a better chance of winning.
On the other hand, the inclusion of your dreams into your life doesn’t have to be drastic: If you’ve always wanted to have a YouTube channel, start by posting a video every other week. If you want to have read 1,000 books by the time you kick off, start by reading for five, or even two hours every week.
Committing to a passion is a funny thing. We say it because it kind of feels like we’re supposed to, in the hopes that will help it manifest into something bigger.
But there’s no reason to think that we’ll still be interested in 10 years in the same things we’re interested in now. I wish I could know now what the optimal way to spend my time is. It drove me crazy trying to figure it out, but it’s simply not possible. What we can do is to live out a miniature version of what we envision every day. For me, that means to keep trying and practicing, to commit each day to being free. That sounds like an okay life to me.
MiC Columnist Kenneth Sun can be reached at sunken@umich.edu.