Lyons: Students should embrace indecision

From choosing which high-calorie food to eat in Market Central to figuring out what career we… From choosing which high-calorie food to eat in Market Central to figuring out what career we want to pursue, indecision plagues us all.

How prevalent is it? Dr. Fritz Grupe, founder of MyMajors.com, told MSNBC that about 50 percent of students change their major at least once during their undergraduate tenure. It’s exceedingly rare that freshmen who go into college with a pre-med double major in biology and chemistry graduate with those same majors written on their diplomas.

Why, then, do we often freak out when our ambitions and life goals are challenged? Are we really so delusional to think we’re all exceptions to the norm? We need to learn to become comfortable with unpredictability, as it will inevitably creep into our lives and eat us alive if we don’t welcome it with open arms. Life would be no fun if we were able to guess exactly where we were going to be in 10 years.

Part of the blame for our inability to tolerate uncertainty lies with our parents. From birth we were told that we were special and gifted in ways everyone else wasn’t. As a result, we began believing we were better than our peers and wouldn’t succumb to the trials and tribulations they so often experienced. This turned out to be completely untrue. Regardless of whether you’re a brilliant astrophysicist or “lowly” liberal arts major, “you are not a unique and beautiful snowflake,” to quote Chuck Palahniuk’s “Fight Club.” No one is immune to the basic human tendencies of frustration, failure or confusion, from the senior trying to figure out what to do after graduation to the doe-eyed freshman trying to discover a major. Think about your older family members: How many of them are working in fields relevant to their majors?

Of course, part of the reason indecision is stressful is because we think it’s financially taxing. Many students feel as though they’re wasting their parents’ money by not having a precise direction in college. What they fail to realize is that parents are paying just as much for their children to have a complete college experience and develop a general education as they are for them to lay the foundation for specific careers. By “college experience,” I mean the ability to be a critical observer of society and form arguments against trends with which you do not agree — not the “experience” of being a frat star and dancing on bars or throwing up on your friends’ couches. Students need to realize that as long as they’re honing their opinions and scrutinizing their surroundings, they’re not wasting a single cent of their money or a second of their time.

Try to think of indecision positively. Take a class or two outside your major; it may attract you to a subject you might not have otherwise known about. And for those of you for whom graduation is approaching: Sit back, relax and take a deep breath. Apply for jobs and grad schools, but don’t settle for anything that you’re not passionate about. You have your whole life to fall into a career you dislike so that you can support a family; there’s no use starting all of that when you’re 22.

I, of course, am not immune to the stressors of indecision. I used to freak out on a bimonthly basis, fretting over where I want to live when I graduate to what I want to do for a career and whether I want to attend law or graduate school. Now, however, I’m confident with my plans for my immediate future, by which I mean I can say what I’m majoring in without curling up into the fetal position and crying. I’m content with my aspirations for the next few years and understand that indecision and unpredictability can arise at any time. In a life where these two phenomena are so pervasive, being happy with our current state is all we can really do.

Contact Kelan at kjl27@pitt.edu