Firefighter? Lawyer? Vet? Chef?

There are many advice on how to decide what to study in university. Essentially, an advice with many variations: Find your niche. Just do what you love. Do what you do best. Everything else will fall into place.

What do you do when there are all these options, and you don't know what is your niche, what is it you love doing, and what is it you do best? What if you are like me, and you are absolutely clueless.

Just take it one step at a time. Get a basic degree. Sure, of course I am aiming to get a basic degree. I just need to know one thing: degree of what?

When there are so many options, and you are not particularly good at anything, it's hard to narrow down your choices. Think about it.

When you are not amazingly good at playing the piano, nor do you have a very good eye for fashion and creative designs; when you are basically mediocre at everything you do, you can't instantly rule any programme in favour, nor can you confidently rule others out. And so the options remain open, taunting you with countless "what-ifs".

What if I'm supposed to be an environmentalist? An activist fighting against the clubbing of seals? A movie director? A CEO?! A personal assistant - getting coffee and my boss's dry cleaning, scheduling his/her meetings and answering my boss's phone calls? Maybe I'm supposed to be working in a lab, hunched over a microscope looking for a significant black dot? Or maybe I'm really going to be someone working at the Space Station, doing a gravity defying experiment that will change everyone's lives as we know it. :O What if I'm really a fire fighter? A police officer? A teacher? A lawyer? A pediatrician? A vet?!

This is the reason why they ask you when you're young: Little Girl, what do you want to be when you grow up? Because they know, that it takes a long, long time for people to figure this out. So they gave us ample time. And I was foolish enough to not give it any thought, thinking that I would know when the time comes. So much for destiny.

Today, someone important to me told me that I shouldn't agonise over my search for my niche. I should just grab whatever that I can do. Whatever that slightly interests me. There's no point searching for the perfect degree, because there isn't one. Just go to university, attend classes, and graduate with a degree - any degree.

Agreed. It is true that many people do that. They just graduate with whatever degree, because they have no choice!

Keywords: No Choice.

Their sole interest is to graduate with a degree - any degree, and go to work. Pay of their schooling debt. Help to financially provide for their family. Or, they are incapable of other options and have no choice but to study this particular programme, and only this programme.

I am happy to say that my life is overflowing with choices. My parent(s) is/are supportive of anything I do. I have no obligations to "hurry up and graduate and go to work so that we can retire", no one breathing down my neck saying "accountingggg.. study accounting! Who doesn't need accountants?!", no one saying "you gotta get into an Ivy League, graduate and work at Wall Street!", no pressure at all. So why should I take the easy way out and put a non-existent limit to the choices that I have? Why should I "just take anything and graduate"?

Either way, I'm paying the same amount of tuition. I might as well try to find my niche while I'm at it. I would rather work my ass off taking all sorts of electives - from astronomy, earth sciences, philosophy, linguistics, history, geography, to visual arts and mathematics, trying to find what I love and what I do best, than take the easy way out, pretending that I am given no choice in my life.

So, very important person, I will not share with you the plans that I am brewing, nor will I ask you for advice over this matter, anymore. I am set on finding this niche and I will find it. Thanks for lighting that fire in me.