Figuring out what you’d like to do with your life can be a challenge, but it’s a challenge that everyone must overcome. The path that each individual takes to find what they’d like to do looks different for everyone. My journey started with a lot of uncertainty.
I graduated high school in 2017 and took the fall off from college in order to save money and hopefully figure out what I wanted to do. While I was able to save up a little, I was no closer to figuring out my life path. Even still, I felt like I needed to start college. After all, that’s what you do at 18. I ended up attending Brigham Young University in the spring of 2018.
From 2018 to 2020, I attended three semesters at college. Each one felt aimless and a little pointless. I didn’t know what I wanted to do or why I was even attending school. I tried to fix that feeling by transferring schools and even changing my focus from general education to commercial music, but it didn’t help. Things only got worse for me mentally.
By the end of my third semester, I failed three of my five classes. I just couldn’t muster the mental energy to try. When finals rolled around, I had given up. After this I chose to take an extended break from school and I shifted my focus onto my mental health.
I started attending therapy, got on some antidepressants and I began to understand who I am and what I want with my life. Unfortunately, by the time I was ready to go back to school, the coronavirus pandemic was in full swing. It didn’t feel like the right time to try going back to college.
For all of 2020, I worked full-time at my job and not much else. While my mental health was far more stable than it had been in the years prior, I still couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that something was wrong. I was supposed to be doing something more with my life, not just working in a warehouse.
In the spring of 2021, I took a leap that I had been thinking about for a while and I signed up for a data science program that began later that year.
The data science program was great. It was very intensive due to the short length but the intensity didn’t bother me too much because I could see a light at the end of the tunnel. By December, I’d have my certification and the school’s job placement program would help me land a great entry-level position.
In the end, the program worked. In March of 2022, I had a salary work-from-home coding job that came with a $5,000 raise every six months. It felt incredible not only because I felt like I had overcome the hurdle that school had presented to me, but also because it enabled me to pursue my real passion: creating videos.
My little secret is that I always sort of knew what I wanted to do with my life. I had always had this desire to create videos that I felt like I had to continuously push aside because I had to get a “real job”. With that “real job” in hand, I finally felt free and confident enough to spend a lot of my time pursuing this dream.
I started my YouTube channel in 2022 and continued to spend large amounts of my free time working on it for the next few years. While I didn’t get millions of views or even make money, each video I made got better and the views continued to grow. Unfortunately, life wasn’t done throwing punches and in the fall of 2023 I was laid off from my tech job after the tech bubble burst.
Tech companies nationwide were reducing staff and hiring less. I was sending dozens of applications a day but despite my year and a half of work experience, I only ever got two interviews. I eventually applied for a fast food job and began working away, with no real hope for my future like years before.
This time around though, things were different. I knew what I wanted to do and I had developed confidence in my skills through all the work I’d put into my YouTube channel. It was time for me to go back to college for a third time.
I applied to Weber State University because Weber offers degrees in digital media and I began attending classes during the fall semester of 2024.
I had learned plenty during my other semesters but this time it felt different. This time I was learning things I actually cared about. My digital media classes were helping me learn about parts of the industry I had no clue about and further develop the skills that I already had. I even managed to end the semester with a 3.7 GPA.
There was one major difference this time around: I’m old. In the grand scheme of things, 25 is still pretty young. However, it doesn’t feel that way when most of your classmates are 18 to 22. Admittedly, this was a big insecurity of mine at the start of the fall semester.
I felt out of place and a little bit like a failure because I was only now getting my degree. That feeling began to fade once I started to meet my classmates. I wasn’t the only person in this situation.
One of my digital media classes was filled with non-traditional students like myself and their stories were pretty similar to mine. One of these students, Joshua Ijaika, became a close friend of mine.
Ijaika graduated early from high school and started to attend the University at Buffalo when he was 17 years old. His struggle mirrored my own in a lot of ways.
“I thought I knew what I wanted to do but I really didn’t, and I kind of knew that deep down.” Ijaika said.
His first semester went fine. He got mostly C’s because he didn’t really care about any of his work. As long as he passed, he was happy. This mentality only got worse during his second semester and by the end of it, he had dropped out.
Ijaika took a three year break from college and he returned to school in 2021. This time around he had a much clearer picture of what he wanted to do with his life.
“I recognized what I wanted to do,” Ijaika said, “I wanted to do something in any video production field so communication with an emphasis on digital media is perfect for me.”
Weber State provided Ijaika with the opportunity he was looking for. It had a program he was excited about, it was close to home and it was more affordable than his last school. Ijaika also struggled with being older than most students.
“One of the things that made me really anxious about going back to school was the age difference,” Ijaika said. “I recognize that we’re all essentially the same age, I’m a little bit behind some people my age but everyone goes at their own pace at the end of the day.”
While Ijaika and I both found that returning to college was the right decision, other people stick with alternative options. Brooklyn Moss, a cosmetology student at the Avalon Institute, is a great example of this.
Moss originally wanted to attend a trade school so she could put herself through traditional college easier. As her program has moved forward though, her plans have changed.
“When I got into the real stuff that cosmetology had to offer, I realized traditional school wasn’t going to be a part of my plan,” Moss said.
No matter where you are on your journey, understand that almost no one sticks to their first plan. Sometimes life gets in the way and other times people find a new path for themselves that works better.
Don’t feel bad if your life doesn’t match the path that we think that it should follow. Almost everyone takes years to really understand themselves and to find their own life path forward. If you haven’t figured that out yet, don’t worry. You will.
