We’re rounding the corner. Away from late fluorescent nights in front of the computer screen. Away from walks down Comm Ave with eyes half open, feet dragging. Away from hurricaning thoughts about career paths and internships and away from nightmares about unemployment.
We’re rounding the corner, into Thanksgiving break. A break that, in my opinion, is long overdue. But regardless, Thanksgiving break is a break. A time to reflect.
In a moment of desperate indecision last week, I dialed Danny. Danny worked on the same BUTV10 show as me, and graduated last year. He picked up the phone to a slew of concerns about different options and “what-ifs” and potential consequences I’d thought up. I could barely breathe between all of the varied ideas about how to achieve.
But to achieve what? He challenged me. To achieve a career? To achieve success? No decision between choice A and choice B would make or break my career, he said, with the wisdom of a person who’d held a Bachelor of Science for six months. The wisdom of a person whose student-loan grace period had just expired.
In the end, Danny said, I needed to make the decision that made my heart happy. Should I do the LA abroad program or stay in Boston? I asked. Go with the one that “felt right,” he answered. I was not satisfied with those words in the moment they crackled through the receiver. Even later that night, his words still had me feeling lost.
Days later, though, the words have begun resonating. I’m so focused on how to be successful that I forget to consider how to be happy. Lucky for us, as COM students, what makes us happy is often synonymous with what makes us successful. But instead of beating my over-worked brain into the ground and penning pro and con lists until my hands cramp up, maybe I should start making the big decisions of junior year with a little more input from my heart.
Sorry if that’s a little cheesey. I’m a Film/TV major, after all. Rounding the corner into my final semesters at COM.
