The Million Dollar Question

"If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavors to live the life which ones has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." 

- Henry David Thoreau. 

I gradated from Brigham Young University.

So what is next?

The first few times people asked me that question I responded with these long elegant answers of what my dreams jobs would be, where I wanted to live, and how I would get there. Around the eight-hundred-and-ninety-fifth time I was asked I decided to simplify it to... 

I don't know. 

Usually my blunt answer is followed by a blank stare of pity from the inquirer. The reality is I got a bachelors degree that requires a graduate degree. I've decided that graduate school is not in the cards just yet (thanks to my girl band, the Giga Pets). This lack of a marketable degree leads me to find a career path unique to my talents and abilities. What are my talents and abilities?

It has escaped me. 

I know that I have skills, abilities, and interest that will make me extremely successful at an amazing job. However, for the past six years or so I haven't been focused on them. I have been focused on getting a degree. What they don't tell you about college is that standardized education requires you to mold to what the system needs. This means you take courses planned for you, not based on your talents. You pick degrees that are offered by your school, not that tailor made to your passions. You got to a school so they can legitimize your ability to work, not your work itself.

Most of the time the systems produces individuals who are ready to enter a work force. Look at all those BYU business grads moving to LA and NYC. The system perfectly prepared them to walk in to Trump Towers and do their dream job. My dream job however isn't in Trump Towers. It is made up. My dream job isn't "system-able." So while I wait for my golden opportunity to make it so, I have to get experience else where. That is why my elegant answer is now simply an "I don't know." It may be vague, but at least it is honest.

So now I'm reevaluating. What am I good at? What do I want to do? What can I do? As soon as I figure that out, I'll answer that million dollar question everyone has been asking. Until then accept my "I don't know" as possibly one of the best "to be continueds" that there ever has been. 

xoxo.