Throughout a student's life, one of the main pressures and source of stress is the worry about becoming successful. In my opinion this past week's convocation speaker, Dr. Jeremy Hunter, did an excellent job of quelling those fears for the freshmen students present at the event. However, his words and reassuring statements resonated greatly with myself as well. I hate saying the word "senior" because I never want to leave Wittenberg. This place is so magical to me and has essentially become my home. To graduate from such a prestigious university and to be expected to move on and make something of myself with such high achieving alumni before me was/is a lot of pressure. I was confident coming into my freshman year at Wittenberg in what I wanted to do for a career. The long term goal was to become a photojournalist and work my way up to getting a job at a magazine, National Geographic for example, where I would be able to travel the world, meet exciting people, learn about life outside of the United States, and have amazing adventures for the rest of my days. The career path was absolutely perfect and fit my personality to a "T." However, after spending time at this wonderful university and sharing experiences and memories with some of the most kind hearted and loving people I could ever dream to know, I came to realize that I simply would not be able to carry on with my career path. I realized that what gives me the most pleasure in life is not just adventure and learning and meeting people who are vastly different than I am. What really makes me the happiest is helping people live better lives. I discovered this past summer that there would be no way for me to travel to some of the poorest areas on the planet and put my camera in between a person who clearly needed help in order to capture their moment of pain and suffering to make a living for myself. After thinking it through, I recognized that if I were to continue with my original career plan, I would most likely return from wherever I was located, show up to work the next day, my boss would ask me for my work, I would hand he or she a story and they would say, "Where are all your compelling photos to accompany this work?" and I would be forced to reply, "I didn't have time, I was too busy helping a family build a house." Therefore, I am switching my career path to work for an organization such as UNICEF or Habitat For Humanity.
Now, some students hearing this story may begin to panic for me and think, "Heavens, you should have thought about this sooner! You just wasted all this time!" Actually, I didn't. I got a great education, I met amazing people, I've won a volleyball National Championship, I've had more adventures than you could shake a stick at, and I've discovered who I really am and what I am supposed to do. On top of all that, I'm still using my degree from Wittenberg and merely building on it by going to graduate school.
I think that the reason Dr. Jeremy Hunter's words stuck with me was because of his primary message about the difference between making a living and making a life. I wish that all seniors had attended the convocation, in order to remember why we are at Wittenberg and to have confidence entering this exciting year. Hopefully, with this new career path, I will be making a life rather than making a living in the future.
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