College is my first recollection of experiencing choice, and looking back I got it wrong. I majored in economics and should have majored in English. This mistake was caused by making two errors. First, I was thinking long term and not living in the moment. Second, I was not following my heart. The problem was one of choice. Unless I was pursuing a trade major – engineering, computer science, art, music – I had to be vigilant about pursuing that which I loved doing. A liberal arts concentration is an extremely vague pursuit, and to get any value from it, I had to know exactly what I wanted each and every day. Even narrowed down from liberal arts to economics, there was still a vast leniency of choice within my major. I was unable to critically evaluate this as an eighteen to twenty-two year old boy.
If I were given the chance to redo college knowing what I now know, I would ask myself two questions as often as possible:
- Do I love what I am doing?
- Do I excel at what I am doing?
As long as I was able to answer both of these questions with “Yes” I would know I was on the right track – and I would not have taken Accounting I and II. There would be no room for BS – then or now. The long run would not matter. I wouldn’t have to think about what would bring me the most money or be the best major to get me into law school, because the focus would be on present day happiness.
And now, for the rest of my life I hope to learn from my mistakes in college and ask those two questions of myself – Do I love what I am doing? and Do I excel at what I’m doing? If not, then I hope I have to courage and means to change for the better.