Nowadays, that’s bad advice. Undergraduate degrees are beyond expensive, and graduate degrees are even more costly. Stories are rife about college students racking up huge debts chasing degrees that don’t lead to jobs lucrative enough to pay them off.
Crippling costs of post-secondary education make it unlikely or impossible for many students to move up the social ladder. Without much (or any) disposable income left over after paying basic expenses and college loan payments, many young adults have little to look forward to in life beyond renting, penny-pinching, and dealing with the stress of living paycheck to paycheck.
For nearly all young people today, I believe the best advice is: Major for money, minor for love.
Before we go any further, it’s important to understand three SAT words: vocation, avocation, and amateur.
A vocation is a primary job. It’s the work you do to earn a living, a professional pursuit, a step along a rewarding career path.
An avocation is work you do for fun, in your spare time. It’s a hobby, essentially. Something you do for the pure love of doing it.
An amateur is a person who works hard to excel at a beloved activity while receiving no monetary reward for doing so. For many years, the Olympic Games were open only to amateur athletes, those training and competing for no other reason than personal satisfaction and love of their sport.
My advice is to major in a field of study that will pay good money and provide you with a good job that you won’t hate. Find a lucrative field you can excel in, one that doesn’t turn your stomach, and put most of your time into advancing your skills in this direction. At the same time, minor in a different field simply for the sake of immersing yourself in that which fascinates you. In your spare time, recharge your spirit by doing what you truly love.
Major in accounting, minor in creative writing. Major in business, minor in dance. Major in statistics, minor in Italian. Major in nursing, minor in psychology. Major in AI, minor in art history.
You may not want to turn something you love into a vocation, anyway. Do you really want to make your passion a day-to-day struggle?
Imagine your passion is creative writing. How would you honestly feel about having to deal with marketing hassles, constant criticism and rejection, stifling commercialism, and unforgiving deadlines that fill the lives of professional writers? Do you realize how much competition there is for the vanishingly small number of well-paying spots in such a field? How long it takes to rise through the ranks, earning almost nothing in the meantime? Is it worth it? The stress involved could well destroy your passion for writing.
Instead, engage in your passion on the side, part-time, as a hobby. Do your own thing on your own terms, simply for the love of doing it. Be an amateur, not a professional. Instead of spending most of your days battling with the many frustrating and soul-crushing aspects of life as a professional writer, join online writing circles, groups of other aspiring amateur writers, and enjoy sharing and improving your work on an informal, part-time basis with an appreciative audience of like-minded people.
Spend most of your time doing something that feeds your wallet, and some regular time on that which feeds your soul.
You’ll avoid the tremendous stress associated with being chronically debt-ridden and cash-strapped while getting maximum pleasure out of the activity you most enjoy in life.
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Copyright © 2006-present: Christopher R. Borland. All rights reserved.
