What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up? A Teen’s Perspective

The reality starts to slowly dawn on you as you make your way towards adulthood that those childhood fantasies of living in castles far, far away, with millions of golden coins at the tips of your fingers and infinite time to laze around under a sun that never sets are fading into a distant place that will never come back again. You tell yourself with each passing day that you’ll think about the real future later. But one day you’ll be standing face-to-face with it, caught off guard with how fast the responsibilities of adulthood have crept up on you.  

I must start facing reality right now, like many other high school students. I have to consider early admissions, what courses to take, which university to choose, and other major choices that will ultimately influence my career path.  My parents always told me I had two options for my career: medicine or law. Classic career paths for children born into Asian families (as the stereotype goes) and my parents definitely didn’t disappoint. My mother encouraged me to try law, since she’s seen my lifelong love for English. I, being a naive kid, agreed with her. It would be easy, I thought, and it’d be something that I should love doing. Isn’t law just English with longer and more confusing words? 

One thing I’ve learned over the course of the years, is that sometimes people tend to only see the surface of things, never digging deeper than necessary. Law is an incredibly prestigious profession in society. Not only do many, many television shows and movies romanticize it, the idea of the wealth it brings is a big factor of why many people choose this field. Money means happiness in a lot of people’s dictionaries, including my parents’. I also failed to see the level of difficulty of attending law school, because it’s always easier to listen to others than make decisions on my own. But this should never be the reason why I would choose law, because it omits the real reason someone should be a lawyer: because they have a passion for it. 

It wasn’t until recently that I realized maybe law isn’t what I truly wanted to do. I started to notice that instead of following my own aspirations, I was being led by the desires of my mother.

Around the same time, I heard something that changed my perspective of what career I wanted to do for the rest of my life. While I was doing research for different career paths, a YouTuber named Ali Abdaal said in his video “How to Find a Career You Genuinely Love” that, instead of looking at the emotions the career’s label elicits, look instead at what the day-to-day schedule of someone in that field could look like. When I started to understand what lawyers actually do, I realized I’d find many of the tasks they carry out everyday menial and boring.

There was also another issue: I hated debating. I love writing, but I despise public speaking. As a lawyer, you either do public speaking, or you read over thousands of legal documents in a language I had no real passion to try to understand.  

So, this delicate thread that tied me to my “future” was suddenly snapped in half. If it wasn’t law that I was going to do, what would happen to me now? I could feel the anxiety creeping up my throat, haunting me every time I shut my eyes. The ticking of a clock echoed in the back of my mind, as I scrambled to find something else. I felt as though if I didn’t find a different field now, I wouldn’t have time to prepare for university, for the prerequisites, for the career. Why does it feel so sickening trying to find a career? Was I too late? 

Instead of seeing this decision as an assignment that must be completed before a deadline, I looked at it as a vacation itinerary catered towards my needs and wants, one that is enjoyable and doesn’t need to be strictly followed. I also discovered that there are thousands upon thousands of different types of jobs, not just the ones pinpointed by my parents.

 It took time, but it was not impossible. While it is still good to have a structured plan, as it’s important to understand that some majors or careers require prerequisites and extracurriculars, there can be wiggle room for changes.

This perspective allows me to view my future not as a scary monster in the dark, ready to pounce the moment I graduate, but as an unending blank piece of paper that can be filled up as I make my way through life.

I took biology this semester and much to my surprise, I found out that I have a small liking for it. I also looked at how much of my writing was targeted towards mental health and took these two interests to craft a future that looked a lot more promising than what I “wanted” before: neuroscience. It might not be the career I end up choosing, but having the opportunity to learn about something I am interested in is all it took to completely squash those fears of the future. 

Finding the right career path is scary, but like everything in life, it’s an experience that shouldn’t be seen in a bad light. It’s hard for a young adult who is still learning about independence, to try grappling with the idea that everything they do, including which high school courses they take, universities to research, majors to choose, and career to pick, will inevitably impact their lives for better or for worse. The decisions you make now will be important, but they are not permanent, and it’s okay to be anxious about your future, no matter how old you are. They say time is like a ticking bomb, but to me it’s more like an alarm clock keeping you to your schedule, while still allowing you to hit “snooze” one more time.