I’ve written a few articles for The Oracle’s opinion section in my years here that mostly revolve around the little revelations I’ve had about my happiness since starting college. I’ve told stories about changing my major, facing academic burnout, my first relationship and my passion for photography. I feel as though they are culminating together into this one with my final semester revelation: your goals only have to serve you, not what people think of you.
So, what inspired this seemingly simple observation? On the first day of my capstone class, the most important course of my college career where we apply all we’ve learned in journalism to create one, big multimedia project, my professor had a strange request: “Introduce yourselves to the class as yourself five years from now.” We were told to dream big with anything we hoped could happen by then.
Most people named big publications like The New York Times or the Associated Press that they want to publish in. The incredibly important beats of environmental and political reporting, becoming foreign correspondents and tackling social justice issues. My answer was very different from the others.
I told the class my five-year plan was to own a small music venue where I get to do everything I love; book talent, concert photography and sound engineering. My plan largely revolved around my personal life, too. I want to continue living in the Hudson Valley, hopefully own a small house, live with my significant other and be at a point where marriage and kids are a goal for the next couple of years after that. The reaction to mine was understandably different. “Why are you a journalism major who doesn’t have plans to pursue that career to the highest level of esteem?”
While I do have a wild dream of maybe writing for Rolling Stone Magazine as a full-time staff writer, working with the top musicians in the world, I am also a realist who is learning to find fulfillment in the possible, not just the impossible. I know I want a lower-stress life than that of a journalist at the top of their field. I want to live a comfortable life, but not in the way rich people say it when they’re talking about Aspen ski trips — just having enough to be satisfied.
As a kid, my dad always told me “Aim for the moon, land in the stars,” and it always confused me. Why would I aim for something unrealistic when I can perfect the possible? What’s wrong with trying out a few different things, and maybe not every single one turns out great?
The stars also seemed more interesting. There are billions of them, so you never know where you’ll land. Some are even crazier to get to than the moon, so isn’t that an even greater accomplishment than you once thought? The ability to adapt and go with the flow is what the stars can teach you. The moon only teaches success versus failure.
So, my new, corny motto is asking myself: “What’s so wrong with just the stars?”
