That’s right.

While walking to class today, I had a pretty sad epiphany.  I will be working for the rest of my life; constantly.  As I approach the end of my academic life, I have been getting more and more detached from school and social life, and more integrated into the professional work lifestyle.  Clients are becoming more available, I have become ever more skilled in my trade, and I find myself enjoying what I do far more than going to school.  And its worthwhile.  I see results from my web development, and I also have been receiving recommendations from previous clients happy with my work.  I think its safe to say that I have started to make a name for myself.

But, this is the end. This is the last year that I can goof off and relax more than normal.  Its sad to say the least, because I have some qualms with my current direction.  Success is nice, but I feel like I now know how to make this transition while staying happy and relaxed.

Do something you love, and make sure you explored the possibilities.

I love what I do.  Its just that simple.  Most people go into a general discipline that they think they would like to work in, but that will most likely lead to unhappiness.  You need to experiment!  I switched my majors about 5 times.  Here they are in order, so you can see the progression:

1. Undecided
2. Music
3. Film
4. Psychology
5. Neurochemistry and physiology
6. Philosophy
7. Computer Science
8. Undecided
9. Philosophy

I mean come on! I thought it was only 5, but I guess I have changed my major 9 times!  I consider this to be a good thing however, because i tested my tolerance to what I would like for four years, and finally settled on just doing philosophy to graduate and go into web development full time.  My journey led me to web development, and after all of this exploring, I have strong cause to believe in my cause.

You have all the time in the world.

I will be in school for an extra year, but I really don’t care.  You have all the time in the world to graduate, there is no point in sacrificing sleep and stress to graduate when everyone else does.  When you graduate has no measure whatsoever in how successful you will be.  I see too many people who are a mission from hell to graduate on time, and honestly they are unhappy.  This also follows from the previous section in that you are working so hard to graduate at some date, that you never take a minute to explore other disciplines.  This is what I believe causes so many people to eventually become what they worked so hard at becoming, but realize after all that work that they may be interested in something else.  Such a common mistake.

Don’t follow family trends simply to impress

I also never understand why people whose whole family’s members become a lawyer, feel that they should also become a lawyer.  Think for yourself!  You are not your parents, and honestly, there is no gene that you get from heredity that predisposes you for a particular discipline.  Maybe you are good at math, but that doesn’t mean that you have to be specifically a mathematician.  You could truly do anything in the science field.  If this is you, you are limiting yourself so much, I beg you to just take a semester or two to just take classes outside of what your parents took, you are not them.

I know this post came out of nowhere and has nothing to do with the web, but every once in a while I will be posting more personal thoughts that I have.  Hope you all don’t mind.
Evan