To ask an eighteen-year-old what they want to be, to secure and choose a career at such an indecisive and malleable age is just not fair. To choose your path in life that young, should it be allowed?
As Silvia Plath put it, the choices that we all must make in life are like picking the fruit off a fig tree. In her novel The Bell Jar, the protagonist Esther states that “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked….”. There are so many options, so many paths to take in life that its almost impossible to just choose one, finding that every other thing is just as tempting as the first. And what if you pick the wrong one?
What if I made the wrong choice?
Even now, though I enjoy my course and am fortunate enough to have a decent idea of the direction I want my life to go, I still have doubts about my choices and jealousy of others. It is true when they say that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
But with that being said, I am very lucky that I got to choose my GCSEs, my A-levels, my degree, as some students have these decisions predetermined by their parents. I spoke to Amelia Crouch who told me that her “parents decided that I was going to do law basically from the moment I was born. They are both solicitors and wanted me to be the same. I don’t mind law, it has good prospects and is something that will be rewarding, especially financially, but I do often wish that I could have done something like English or history”. She went on further to say that her brother is in the same boat, that “he will also be doing law in a couple of years and is really not too happy about it”.
I then spoke to Charlotte Gardner, who changed from fine art and photography to graphic design. She told me that she “did enjoy the subject of fine art and photography” but that she felt that “it didn’t quite suit the style” of what she really liked to do. The process of switching degrees was “pretty easy” and that the university really helped her “to make the right decision confidently.”.
Isabel Bradshaw interviews Charlotte Gardner on changing degrees
So, no matter where you are in life, whether that’s halfway through university or just starting a new job, it is okay to be unsure and uncertain – you can always change lanes and there is something out there for everybody.
