As a child, each one of us was asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. Our answers were generally met with amused smiles, feigned shock, or laughter from the knowing adults. As we grew older and reached our pre-teen and early teen years and became middle schoolers, some of us still maintained hold on the dreams of our childhood. We still wanted to be firemen, musicians, presidents, or dancers. Slowly, some began to alter their dreams to meet their skills and school activities. Maybe we now wanted to be professional athletes or teachers. As we reached our high school years and were faced with decisions about colleges and majors and careers, many of our dreams quite suddenly became much more practical. We found ourselves concentrating our studies on subjects far from those we originally dreamt that we would. Some of us still dreamed of getting that perfect job, though, with a comfortable salary, benefits, and location. Then came college graduation, or grad school graduation, and each of those former children emerge with bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. degrees and are dumped into the world to make something of themselves, now equipped with a supposedly hard-earned education. A few find those dream jobs; many do not, and as rejection letters fill the trash can, desperation takes the place of any glimmer of ambition and hope and any job becomes that dream job. Before too long, many end up as salesmen or restaurant supervisors or servers. And then comes the day when we look back and wonder how we ended up so far from our dreams. Why is it that the future fireman is now a manager at Chick-fil-A? Why is it that the future musician is delivering mail? Why is it that the future president is now a server at IHOP? Why is it that the future dancer is now a teacher? Some of these changes are the result of simply a change of mind as we progressed from childhood to adulthood. After all, this part of our life is filled with drastic changes and it is only logical that a change in the "dream profession" would be one of them. For how many, though, was the reason for the change simply because it was not practical or because they were too scared or too ill-equipped to try? What it comes down to is that we enter this world as limitless idealists and too often leave it pragmatic professionals. I do not have any grand solutions or memorable pieces of advice here. After all, I am just a college student observing the world from my own limited perspective. I have seen a few soar on the wings of ambition and many crushed under the weight of forsaken dreams. Maybe there is a solution somewhere, some advice that would cut the number of casualties in this war of practicality, where we are drilled in the art of getting by. I do not have it right now and do not even know if it does exist, but I am on the watch for it.
In the meantime, though, this is the journey of our lives. In the end, this is just life; we do the best we can.
Good question. There certainly isn't one simple answer.
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