For awhile I have been contemplating on writing this. For one, I am a person who before posting anything that might even come across as controversial weighs how such a topic might be received and the reactions of others, especially in a public forum such as the internet. When I was younger, I was brash and always spoke my mind, but it didn't always come with desired effects.
Here's my disclaimer: this is just my story and just my thoughts on the entire topic. You can view it as a cautionary tale or whatever you would like.
Upon graduating college, I had no real idea of what path of academia I wanted. I liked the idea of graduate school and felt that I learned/retained nothing from college that could even get me employed anywhere. I NEEDED more education to be of any use in my field of choice: bio-pharmaceuticals. I had a stronger biochemistry background than biology. If anyone asked me about how cell physiology worked, I'd just look and blink at them. I wasn't trained for what I wanted to do at all, so logically, I went for more schooling.
What I didn't realize was that in order to get a PhD it did require having a clearer vision of the path I wanted. I needed to find a lab to do my thesis in. Fairly logical, except I didn't have burning passion for anything I was looking at. It took me two entire semesters to find a lab to call home, and by the end of it, I wasn't even pursuing a PhD anymore.
I started questioning what I wanted to do, especially as responsibilities piled on. Eventually I had to take a breather, step back, and figure out what I wanted in life.
This got me thinking about my education up to this point. I've been a student for most of my life and never performed poorly academically, so I just followed what I felt was the logical step to a financially sound future. Leaving high school, I just wanted something that would lead me to a job. I wasn't especially passionate about anything so I went with what I was good at: math and science. In a performance arts high school I never reall stood out talent wise and had terrible stage fright so where others were going to conservatories, I did a 180 and set (what I thought of as) a more realistic goal. I knew I didn't want pure science. I could never only do research and not apply it, so I went to engineering. I did alright in it and got accepted into graduate school. Still no spark, no passion.
I slowly got more and more into my art and realized that nothing I did up to this point prepared me for this questioning, the envy, and the wondering. I would look at my colleagues wonder how they could stand reading all the journal articles and paper after paper and retain all that knowledge. All I looked forward to was for 5pm to roll around and head home to sew.
The more I thought about it, the more useless I found mandatory education. Although it helped me become a somewhat well rounded person, mandatory education just put me in what I felt was a factory: in goes a student, out comes someone to work in society. None of it dealt with passion, and working year after year just for a job seemed like it was becoming too much for me.
It was really scary for me to think of how much effort I put into something that I would dread. It was definitely a nightmare for me to be stuck in a niche for the rest of my life and to HATE every moment of it.
Those who I spoke to suggested I possibly leave without finishing my degree and change my life style. All in all it was a shock. Not only am I a persistent (aka stubborn) but I didn't want to get nothing out of it after putting all this time and money into my education.
My questioning did get to the point where I wanted to just give it all up and just sew all day, but the practical part of me gave me a gigantic punch of reality and I knew it was just dreaming, but hey who knows what I can make it into in 5 years.
For now, I'm going to finish what I started (partially because I've never quit), but I think I've taken my blinders off and am open to more possibilities than the one road I had my eyes set on.
Overall the past year and a half has been an emotional roller coaster that dipped pretty low, but I just gotta be a little more optimistic and hope that I'm not too old and too late to be able to find something I really want.
The American mindset of always prizing early achievement and youth can really be stifling in cases like this. It's really sad that I haven't even hit 30 and I feel like all my best years are behind me.
