Money. It makes the world go round, or something like that. I may have decided my passion from a young age, but I hadn’t decided on a job, not in any practical way. The hard lesson everyone learns between ages 17 and 21 is that choosing your dream is different from choosing your major, which is yet again different from choosing your career. I learned this lesson the moment I fostered my love for creative writing, and I keep learning it every day.
It’s not so bad, really. I’m studying English, which is very transferrable to a number of different fields, no matter what people will tell you. You only have to engage in a quick cursory scroll through any social media platform to understand that people lack writing skills, communication skills, and critical thinking skills. People lack empathy and can’t formulate nuanced opinions. I’m not suggesting that everyone become an English major, but I do encourage a reworked perception of what the field can offer.
So I don’t regret what I’ve chosen; I only regret not pushing myself out of my comfort zone far sooner, all the way back in high school, in order to learn the skills I’d need to shape my career in English. In freshman year of college, I unfortunately hesitated to join extracurriculars and attend general meetings that would allow me to meet new people and find things I might be interested in. I’ve since overcome that hesitation, thankfully, and now I know that I enjoy journalistic writing, marketing, communications, and more generally, learning new things.
That doesn’t mean the insecurity doesn’t creep in every once in a while. Every month, I spend at least one evening freaking out about what I will do after I graduate, and I panic-apply to a million jobs that I ultimately don’t hear back from. My parents are incredibly supportive and love to hear about school, but I’ve noticed that my family friends, the aunties and uncles, aren’t quite sure what to ask or if there is anything to even discuss. I get it, truly, but I can’t help but compare myself to my sister and others in our family who’ve chosen something more recognizable.
If you’re in the humanities, you probably understand this feeling—the tugging sensation that suspends you between your wildest dreams and the real world below. The Icarian knowledge that either side will damn you. Most of the time, it doesn’t feel quite this theatrical, but I don’t think anyone is immune to the chilling realization, even if inaccurate, that the things you do as a teenager determine the rest of your life. Such is the condition of being a teenager in the first place. Why can’t we all just do what we love, right?
The divide between your passion and your career prospects might feel chasmic now, but there are ways you can reconcile even the most distant of pipe dreams and the most mundane 9-to-5 jobs.
I used to work for NYU’s outreach and fundraising organization, which was often the bane of my existence, but I took every shift as an opportunity to learn about other people and their backgrounds. I learned about their fields of interest and the ways they used their schooling to propel them into careers that suited their niche interests. I once spoke to someone that illustrated tarot cards. I still quit that job after a semester, but I have plenty of stories to tell. which makes the semester of asking strangers for money sort of worth it. I don’t intend on continuing that sort of work full-time, but I know that if I keep collecting stories and experiences like that one, I’ll find joy in any job.
My ultimate goal is to have a job that sustains me financially and doesn’t make me dread it every night and morning, but I think eventually I’ll come to accept that your job won’t and probably shouldn’t be your life. If I completely turn creativity and writing into my source of income, will I still covet them as I do now?
If you siphon all your passion into the thing that you have to do or you lose your stability, is it still passion?
My hope is that I can look down that cavernous gap and feel security in traveling between both sides of it. My hope is to make just enough money that I feel content waking up each morning—though I certainly wouldn’t be mad if I made a little more. Money might sustain you, but your passions will keep you alive.
By Oshmi Ghosh
Oshmi Ghosh is a rising junior at NYU’s College of Arts and Sciences, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English with minors in Creative Writing, History, and Entertainment Business. You can usually find her appreciating the simple things in life: tea with milk and sugar, a good book, and/or intensely competitive board games.
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