Why I Currently Hate My Future As A College Student

Psalms 112:5 - "A good man sheweth favour, and lendeth: he will guide his affairs with discretion."

For the last two months, my days have proceeded thusly.

I wake up. I get ready for the day. I spend about an hour working on Change and Cherish. I walk to school.

And then, it doesn't stop.

I slog through homework assignment after homework assignment. I go to class and work. I say hi to a few friends before dragging myself to bed. And then I do it all over again.

In this time frame, with the sole exception of this blog, I haven't worked for more than fifteen minutes in a single week on a personal project. If I find myself with any free time, I spend it snoozing or winding down. Sometimes, I snooze or wind down even when I don't have time to, simply because I cannot muster any energy to drag my nose against the millstone.

My only solace is found in my relationships and in writing this blog. In these, I'm doing something for me.

But I miss writing novels. I miss feeling like I had time to be quiet and think about life. I miss not feeling guilty whenever I try to relax or spend time with my loved ones.

What's worse, I'm trying to graduate this August. So I'm looking at jobs and I'm looking at grad school and I'm trying to care about either of them. I'm trying to decide what I want to do with my life. And I'm stressed out.

I want to be a professional writer. I want to write books and the like. However, there is no guarantee I will ever find employment in that line of work. So I'm in school to receive an education to support my hobby.

But I also want a family. I can't just accept employment with mediocre pay. Odds are, I won't be paid enough to raise children with just an English degree.

So then it comes down to it. Do I want time to pursue creative pursuits? Better not go into grad school for the next two-to-three years. I don't have enough time to be creatively active as it is.

Of course, if I want to have a family, then I might regret not going to grad school if I'm forced to spend even more time working to make up for my low income.

Of course, going to grad school will barely help with the money thing, because the only programs I feel able to stomach are teaching K-12, or becoming a professional librarian. Neither of these positions pay anything worth mentioning, which means I'd come out of school with a ton of debt and no way to pay it off. After all, my kids' mouths gotta come first, right?

And either way, only people who know me personally compliment me on my writing skills. I'm obviously not that good at writing. Why bother improving that talent anymore? I'm going to be busy trying to earn money or going to more school to earn barely any more money.

What's worse is that I'm imagining making sacrifices for a potential future family, an abstract concept I can't grasp because I haven't even had a girlfriend since I came back from Jamaica. I certainly don't feel prepared or worthy to enter into that sort of covenant with someone.

I work hard. I have tried my very best to become a published author, to make a splash with my writing, to balance my personal ambitions with my pursuit of an educational degree.

I feel like my personal ambitions and accomplishments make me unique. I care about how that makes me feel.

I often feel like no one else cares. People only seem to care about my degree, which is basically a luxury item I paid someone else to forge on top of a conveyor belt. My degree won't make me unique in the slightest. If anything, it's just molding me into another identical cog in a manufactured machine.

And it doesn't matter! In the end, neither my personal drive nor my educational degree will be rewarded. None of my diligence or ingenuity will result in any rewards.

"Your novel concept is interesting," someone might say. "But not something I want to represent. And you powered through a Bachelors degree in three years? Now, that's interesting. Oh wait, it's in English? Go spend more money you don't have and more time you don't want to give up and get a better degree. Sorry you wasted so much time doing something you love instead of doing something that will be useful."

I feel like many people around me are just going through the motions, doing nothing but what their educators and faceless suited potential employers are telling them. They go to class, do their homework, and get their degree so they can be shuffled off into some machine. They don't accomplish anything for themselves.

I feel like I have dreamed and tried to rise above that monotony, but because I am apparently not notable enough to draw anyone's attention, my personally-motivated extracurricular efforts are ignored.

So, now what do I do?

I can't just use my time to work on my creative projects, because then I won't have money to support my faceless future family.

I can't earn money with my creative projects.

Best case scenario, I go to grad school to get a job that hypothetically will grant me more money and more time, even if I have to shoulder a stupid large amount of debt to pull it off.

But in those two or three years I spend trying to invest in that potential freedom I still may never taste, I won't have time to write. I might become stagnant in my creative abilities. If you don't use it, you lose it. If that happens, I'll lose a large part of what I feel to be my identity.

So, I'm stuck. I don't currently want or even need extra money, but what if I have four extra mouths to feed? I want to use my time pursuing my hobbies, but I apparently don't have any time to do so. I will starve if my hobbies are my only active pursuit.

So, yeah. I hate my future because I feel pulled in every direction, trying to please people I don't know. But what do I know? Maybe they're right. You can't have a nightmare if you never dream.

I know some people have made one of the sacrifices I've described here. I don't criticize you for whatever choice you ended up making. However, you can't look me in the eye and tell me it wasn't hard.