In high school, it was a mandatory part of career planning to take a “personality” test. My peers and I were crammed into a small computer lab equipped with bulky computers and forced to sit through a series of strange multiple-choice questions. This test was going to tell me who I was, what I was “cut out” to be.
In psychologist terms, my personality result was “Introversion, intuition, feeling, perception” (INFP). This terminology doesn’t mean much to laypeople, so the personality types were given more attractive names — kind of like inflated names of drink sizes at Starbucks. My personality type was called “The Healer.”
Damn, it sounded cool. My eyes lit up — finally, calculated proof of my inner brilliance.
My traits: creative, ethical, altruistic and deep. My ideal jobs: novelist, activist, architect and teacher. My counterparts: Shakespeare, George Orwell and John F. Kennedy. I was destined for greatness.
Yet here I am, four years and a whole lot of Ramen noodles later, and I feel just as uncertain about my future as I did when I was a junior in high school.
I’ll be graduating in less than two weeks. Then I’ll be returning home to live with my parents. No grad school and no job. I’m livin’ the dream. (Cue the laugh track.)
When I’m asked the fatal question — “What are you doing after graduation?” — I cringe, not out of embarrassment, but because I cannot stand the look of distaste on some people’s faces when they hear my response. I’ve been tempted to make up some elaborate fantasy about a year in the Peace Corps, just so I can leave the conversation with some dignity.
I envy all of you who are so sure of your career paths — I’m always questioning myself. Perhaps I’ve taken too many philosophy courses. My problem is not my rèsumè, but my mind — it’s always in the clouds.
So what went wrong? Well technically, I did everything right. I double-majored, got good grades, studied abroad, had summer internships and did some extracurricular activities.
But I’m starting to think that the expectations messed me up. Since high school I’ve been bombarded with the question “Well, what are you going to do?” so often that I felt pressured to “just pick something already.” So I arbitrarily picked law. Then I worked at a law firm and spent my days staring into a computer screen for so long that my eyes burned. That was the end of that.
There is so much anxiety over failure, or falling behind or not doing the “right” thing, as if life is something to be “won” through intricate planning and mapping it all out. Perhaps it is for some, but I’d like to live my life as it comes at me.
It’s so tempting for me to revert back to that silly test and my nice-sounding result, “The Healer,” and look for some guidance on what “I ought to be doing with my life.” But life is so random really, and I’ve just got to make the best of all the great, awful and life-changing experiences and stop focusing on what I’m “supposed” to do.
So here I am, slightly lost and maybe a little scared, but happy. College has been the greatest experience, one that has defined me as a person, though I must give my apologies to my parents, who won’t be too happy to find out that they spent four years of college tuition to help me “find myself.”
I’ve made the greatest friends and learned to see the false ones. I’ve had great classes and even greater teachers. I’ve enjoyed a hot tub party in the middle of College-in-the-Woods, survived living in Downtown Binghamton and spent a semester in friggin’ Europe.
What more could I really ask for?
Lastly, I’d like to dedicate this column to my friend Jordan Hirsch, who passed away last May. In my life after college, I can only aspire to posses the kindness and earnestness that radiated from him.