Doubts persist despite clear career path

Title: Welcome to Bohemia

I would like to think the life path I have chosen for myself is more difficult than necessary. Or rather, I could’ve made things much easier on myself, preventing the periodic episodes of tremendous self-doubt that permeate my otherwise confident outlook. “Why shouldn’t I just change things?” I ask myself during these times. The answer: Because I would much rather tough out the experience that forces me to live up to my full potential as a person than wonder about the outcome for the rest of my natural-born life.

So far so good. I’ve accepted my well-planned (and mostly executed) decision and am moving forward with my life. Of course, as the gods would have it, a recent experience forced me to glance back at my “what if” journeys, knocking down a few pegs one of the main reasons I’m sticking in this whole career choice thing at all: the promise from those beyond undergraduate education.

That is, people whom you hold dear to your heart who have survived your experiences that unequivocally prove to you that there is life beyond this tiny (but oh so influential) microcosm of academia. Recently, I talked with a close friend of mine attending a graduate program at UCLA. He was extraordinarily successful during his undergraduate career and showed only more promise post-graduation. After getting comfortable with the conversation, he revealed something very interesting: He is considering dropping out of graduate school. (He actually calculated there is just over a 25-percent chance of his remaining enrolled.)

A host of reasons led him to this prediction. First, despite his tremendously broad knowledge background and superb capability, he can’t help but feel dwarfed by the vastness of his area of interest. Apparently, the more you know, the more you know how little you know. Secondly, he began sharing fantasies of alternative scenarios, even going back to ponder the possibilities of following through on long-discarded career ideas.

Not surprisingly, he also shared with me a profound need to be close to friends and family. This rung a bell. Missing your favorite people, considering drastic life-direction changes and feeling like an idiot are all symptomatic of first-year-itis. Apparently even my 23-year-old student prodigy can’t escape it.

After further probing, I concluded this was only part of the problem, however. He and I share a need to be inspired by our work, even though this sort of inspiration can be very difficult to attain. While I initially concluded he only needed some time to become comfortable with his new setting, his experience has led him to believe the inspiration he pursues probably isn’t what he’ll get in his chosen career. This was a little more startling. Here is a person very talented at what he does and very clear-minded about his direction, but even he can’t escape these simple nagging questions of alternate possibilities. Basically, would he be happy if he continued down this path?

I think his testimony lends a lot more credibility to what can first appear to be simple questions that arise out of self-doubt. Obviously, my friend knows very well what he is doing, yet he still ponders whether his path is worthwhile. This both rattled me and reassured me: It scared me in that I may never escape questioning my own decisions but gave me confidence that my own questions weren’t simply a product of environmental stress. While he still hasn’t figured out his direction, I imagine his experience is a result of both first-year fears and legitimate questions about his existence. Either way, his experience has reinforced a very valuable lesson that I wish to share: Sometimes, nagging questions about confidence could have something very profound to say.

— Cody Swallows is a senior in the College Scholars Program. He can be reached at codyswallows@gmail.com.