Growing up means
having to decide
Frances Matteck
nw news editor

 What do I want to do when I grow up? This is a question we have been asking ourselves for most of our lives. However, it wasn’t until recently that it became really important.
In elementary and middle school, it was fun to pretend that we were doctors or airplane pilots. In high school, we started to think about college, but most of us picked our colleges based on price, location or reputation, not their relevance to what we thought we wanted to do.
A majority of the students at TCC are here because they don’t know what they want to do yet, so it’s cheaper to get their required courses out of the way at a smaller college. Now that we are in college, we eventually have to pick a major so that we can begin preparing for the jobs we will have when we get out of college. But what if we don’t know what we want to do?
Some people figured out what they wanted to do at a very young age and have been working toward that goal for most of their lives. Some people, like me, jump from one fantastic idea to another. Others have no clue and never really figure out what they want to do. I feel sorry for those people because they end up unhappy working in a profession they are not interested in and could eventually despise.
Remember the computerized job tests we took in high school? You know, the one that got you out of class for an hour. It’s supposed to give you an idea of what you would want to do, right? In my experience, it wasn’t very helpful.
How are we supposed to know what we want to do? I’m only 18, and I have lots of ideas of what I want to do, but how do I pick one? I know what I’m interested in, but is it really what I am supposed to be doing for the rest of my life? I don’t want to start out doing something I love and then learn to hate it because it was only supposed to be a hobby.
I guess my big question is this: how are we supposed to know what we want to do for the rest of our adult lives when we are barely adults?