As a first year, I thought I would have everything figured out by the time I graduated. I would know what the one single thing I wanted to devote my life to was. Typing it out it sounds a little corny, but I think most of us grew up constantly being asked what we wanted to be and what our next step in life was. This perpetuates a sense that you need a single goal, a dream job, and your life has to progress linearly to that point. College was the logical next step in my life after high school and even if I didn’t know what I wanted to do then, I certainly would four years later.
For a while I thought I was going to devote myself to environmental issues which is definitely what inspired me to take 160. This dream was splintered into a million different pathways as I learned what it meant an environmental studies major. I was disheartened but readily absorbed the critiques on modern environmental action. The movements that I once believed wholeheartedly in, were now reductionist and essentialist. There didn’t seem to be a good way to convince people to act without simplifying the story and severing a network of actors and processes that were so integral.
As a second year building my concentration, I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed that I didn’t know what my focus was going to be. I still carried that expectation from my first year with me. I started to take more math classes, and by comparison these were so much more straight forward. I could find answers to the problems that were presented to me. While this satisfied that part of me that wanted answers, I also was started to embrace the tangled up, complex world that we live in and come to terms with the uncertainty in my life. I liked the messiness of environmental issues and ability to switch perspectives that I gained from the envs courses.
As I get closer to leaving Lewis & Clark with still no clear plan, I have started to change my mindset. I have realized that I don’t need a single purpose in life. I don’t need to follow a set path or jump through pointless hoops. It is not that I have no idea what I want to do with my life, it is that there are too many things I want to do. Unlike the expectations of my first year, I feel like I can actually accomplish a multitude of things. Instead of directionless, I prefer to think of myself as a multipotentialite! Setting up unreal expectations for myself is something that I am trying to actively avoid.
I found this TED talk very helpful when grappling with the expectation of a single purpose.
Also, my apologies that this post has nothing to do with porpoises and everything to do with purposes.