By Gino Diguilio
So the last few weeks of this semester, I’ve had very organized and well thought out ideas to bring to the table. But that will not be happening this time around. Just as a fair warning, this could easily turn into a rant, and I am not apologizing for it.
It all started Saturday evening in my kitchen. I was making cinnamon rolls by myself late at night; no, I did not make them from scratch. I barely had enough energy and drive to make the store-bought kind, let alone start baking from scratch! To my understanding, being alone can evoke a lot of down time and with that, a lot of thinking. The thought of my future was being thrown through my mind at light speed.
Here I am, a 21-year-old man, a junior in college, attempting to achieve a degree in a field that I have no intention of going into. Fortunately, having multiple other jobs that are my true passion, that allow me to travel, meet new people and share information openly and freely is a nice secondary thought that I try to keep in the back of my brain. However, seeing friends and peers on a daily basis that are so involved and engulfed in their soon-to-be work field communities gets me thinking that I am not good enough and that my future is so unsure.
Thankfully, before I got to the point of a mental breakdown, which only took about 12 minutes — a new personal record for me — the timer on the oven went off. My thoughts were temporarily halted by the delicious smell of my freshly baked, store bought (by the way, I would whole-heartedly deny this if asked), cinnamon rolls. And after pulling them out of the blazingly hot oven, my mind began relaxing.
I came to the conclusion that I need to set a new personal goal. A ‘cinnamon goal’ if you will … Please laugh at that. I need the support at the moment. I am going to make a point in staying focused on myself this semester. Even though my friends and peers may be extremely fixated on their academic goals and attempting to get jobs into the fields they are studying, I know in my heart that the jobs I am doing outside of school are going to give me three things that my major wont.
Item number fun (get it?): It will give me the ability to be who I am and show who I am to other people in my industry.
Item number two: It will give me the ability to be happy with my life choices and my occupation, in two years and hopefully in 30 years.
Item number three: Last but not least, it definitely pays better than the field I am studying!
So here is what I am trying to get at. Even though everyone around you may seem to have their life planned out, and they seem to be on top of things, don’t feel as if you aren’t good enough just because you don’t exactly fit society’s mold for what young adults should be like. Your personal journey to your career or even the outcome of your future is never going to exactly mirror some other person’s journey. Just roll with the punches. Get it? Roll. Cinnamon roll. That’s the last pun, I swear.
Everyone is different, and his or her journeys are all going to be unique. Just like the cinnamon rolls I was making on Saturday, they’re all different and that’s OK. They were equally delicious, and that is all that matters.
