Last week while I was back home for Thanksgiving I made an interesting discovery.
Somewhere between the football watching, turkey eating and ritualistic baby-blood consumption (we're Jewish), I found myself going through some of the boxes of poor finger paintings, chipped ceramic projects, aced spelling tests and other useless artifacts from my past that my mom has carefully saved over the years.
Although most of the items in the boxes did little more than bring back painful memories from elementary special ed. classes, one item stood out. It was an essay I wrote in sixth grade entitled "My Hopes and Dreams." In it, I delve into my vision of the future, discuss some of my concerns with things like high school and kissing, and confide to the reader that, as a result of the recent passing of my NBA aspirations, I am currently "between dreams" (a copyright infringement suit against Jack Johnson is pending). I go on to say that even though my aspirations have recently changed, I'm really not that worried about my current lack of a dream.
A few days later while on ACES checking my waitlist status on Gentile Burning 136 (Jewish), I noticed a link called "First Semester Self-Assessment." Apparently back in '99 when I was a freshman I had to assess myself and ironically the main objective of this exercise was to list your "Hopes and Dreams." Strangely it didn't seem like my answer had come too far. Here's what I wrote:
"I just want to be well-learned and happy. I would like to play pro sports. If that doesn't work out, I think I'll get bitten by a radioactive insect, gain the powers of that insect, make myself a tight-fitting costume, and become a super hero."
To my chagrin it didn't seem like puberty had done much in the way of adding direction or maturity to my life path.
And to make things worse, almost immediately after reading the assessment I realized that I only have one semester left in college, and not only do I not have any idea what I'm going to do with my life, I don't even know what I want to do. After four years in high school and four to seven years in college, I have no more direction in my life than I did when I was 12.
For people like me whose lives have less direction than this column, it's easy to become dismayed, especially at a place like Duke where it seems like everybody has had a chosen career path from the time their head was soft.
Instead of getting depressed over my directionless life, however, I prefer to look to the numerous examples of very successful people who were also directionless in their early years. For example, I'll bet you didn't know that when Ernest Hemingway graduated from college, he had never read a book cover to cover and actually wanted to pursue a career in tap dance.
And not many people are aware that when Prince was in his early 20's he was actually training to be small engine mechanic. It wasn't until he had his shins removed after a freak lawn mower accident that he began to consider a career in music.
The examples go on and on. Many people may be surprised to hear that as a young woman, Condoleezza Rice played bass in a punk band called "Death To the System," and she would have never gotten into politics if she hadn't been forced to quit the band after the lead singer insisted that the name be changed to "Pauline and the Jug Jugs."
Even our very own Richard Brodhead experimented with several occupations before committing himself to academia. For three years after graduating from New Mexico State, Brodhead toured the country in a traveling ventriloquist show called "Danny the mystical Clown's comedy hour." After the show ran out of funding, Brodhead spent half a year in Greenwich Village pursuing a male modeling career before finally enrolling in graduate school.
Although I made all those examples up, I'm sure that there are lots of real people who actually do have stories like these.
My point is that if you find yourself "between dreams" (back off Johnson, I wrote it in '97 and I have proof) it really isn't the worst thing in the world. Even though you may not know exactly where you will be living next year or how you will provide food for yourself, you can still take comfort in knowing that you will have the potential to do something truly great (especially if you can get your hands on a radioactive insect).
Whatever you do, don't be jealous of all your peers who have jobs waiting for them. Just remember, there aren't any 12-year-olds out there dreaming of an illustrious career in consulting or investment banking.
As I, myself, put it when I was 12, "Dreams change a lot. I'm really not that much worried about it."
Jake Grodzinsky is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Wednesday.
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