PHOTO COURTESY/ Jihye Lee, Sam Lee & Patricia Pang
Throughout my four years of high school, I have prepared for the moment I got accepted into a top school. Yet, after only a few days, the excitement was gone. Achieving the goal I chased after day and night throughout high school was not as fulfilling as I expected. I now realize that getting into a top school should not have been the end goal of my high school journey.
Next school year, I will attend UCLA to major in biochemistry with the intention to go to medical school after college, but the truth is that I don’t really know what I want to do.
Starting from 11th grade, I began looking at career options from an opportunity cost and success probability perspective. I realize that it was too early for me to adopt that kind of mentality because there are not many opportunity costs for me at the moment. I don’t have to worry about what I’m going to eat, where I’m going to sleep or what I’m going to wear. The opportunity costs of my decisions will increase as I get older, so the best time to try whatever I want has been the past 17 years and now, the next four years. I wish I had thought less about choosing a career that put the fanciest roof over my head and more about what kind of work was meaningful to me and could impact others.
High school should have been a time for me to explore my possibilities and try new things because there was no cost even if I ended up not liking it as much as I expected.
Instead, I built walls to block paths that I viewed as risky and narrowed my outlook on the future to a stable job that would pay the bills. I have loved art since I was young and had the dream of becoming a product designer. However, at one point, I ruled out art as an impractical job and stopped my development as an artist. I am no better at drawing than I was four years ago and all that time I could have spent to improve is gone.
My logic was that I would earn a lot of money by doing something I was “okay” with doing and find satisfaction in providing wealth for my family. I’ve already put a limit to my potential by settling for stability before I even pursued anything.
When someone asked Michael Jordan if he worries about missing crucial shots in a game, Jordan replied, “Why would I think about missing a shot I haven’t taken yet?”
As a Bruin, I hope to make Jordan’s words my motto as I search for my interests and strive to be excellent. It is irrational to fear failure before you’ve even tried. Be confident—not because you know you’re going to succeed but because if you’re not confident in yourself, you’ve already failed. Give it a shot. Even if you can’t get yourself to overcome your fear of failure, just know that “failure” at our age doesn’t really mean anything. We’ve got time to spare and more.
I had always thought to myself, “Just get into a good college and you’ll figure out what you want to do with your life later.”
Unfortunately, dreams do not just suddenly come to you. You have to actively seek them out. Simply finding your dream is not the end goal either. You have to improve in what you want to do and find a way to use your dream to help others. Find what you love first then make post-graduation education plans accordingly.
If you wait until you’re older to find your dream, you’ll be behind those who started years before you. It’s only going to get more difficult as you get older so take advantage of the freedom and ability to learn as an adolescent.