Sorry Mom, I’m Not Your Doctor-Lawyer-Engineer
“I don’t know.”
The answer has always been that I don’t know.
In first grade, we had a career day. It wasn’t so much a career day as it was a show-up-to-class-and-tell-us-what-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up day. I remember the fluorescent lights in Ms. Bell’s classroom humming over our rainbow rug. I sat and listened to everyone’s aspirations: my classmates dreamed of saving lives by becoming firefighters or conquering space as astronauts, but when it came to my turn, I loudly exclaimed that I would be a “cashier!” My peers gave me funny looks, but I remembered the loaded cash register at the grocery store—filled with endless wads of cash and piles of coins.
I chose “cashier” not because of its perceived relaxed, easy work life—but because silly seven-year-old me thought all the money in the register was there for the cashier to take home. I didn’t know the difference between minimum wage or Wall Street jobs—all I wished for was a job that would make me rich. After all, my naive young mind thought money could buy happiness. That day, I made the first “choice” for my career.
Like many children, I bounced between passions. In middle school, after discovering my love for the saxophone, I convinced myself I would become a musician. I practiced with vigor until the next interest caught my eye. I jumped between aspirations: being a scientist, then a month later a politician, and a few weeks later, a teacher. I explored as many options as possible, with each phase feeling certain until it wasn't—a pattern that would follow me into high school.
Now, my career ambitions are nowhere near as simple. I am privileged enough to be able to choose where my career starts, yet this privilege weighs heavily. I have meticulously chosen my high school classes to align with my passions, but unfortunately not any career. This differs from a good number of people whom I know, and who you, reader, may know as well. Prospective mechanical engineers skip ninth-grade Geometry so they can take AP Calculus BC and AP Physics C to stand out in their engineering applications. AP Art students spend summers at art studios perfecting portfolios for specialized art schools. Ambitious law students secure internships at prestigious firms to bolster their UK Law personal statements. In four years, these students will be designing weapons for Lockheed Martin, exhibiting abstract paintings in galleries, and practicing corporate law to keep the rich rich. My closest friends have their lives planned out—a MBA from a top school, a job consulting at McKinsey, and retirement by 40.
But I cannot even picture my trajectory a year from now, let alone the rest of my life. And I don’t want to have it drawn out neatly for me. I don’t want to confine myself down one path that I could very well regret—regardless of how much money it makes me. I’m sure my peers will feel this way too—if not now, then perhaps later. We often hear that our prefrontal cortex, the “part of the brain responsible for planning, prioritizing, and good decision-making isn’t developed until the mid to late twenties” (National Institute of Mental Health 2023). At such a young age, how can we make such decisive choices—and how can I stop people from making them for me?
“Kaitlyn, you’d be such a good lawyer,” some say. I know this comes from my love of speaking (often more arguing than speech), but it feels a bit backhanded too. Of course, I don’t shut down the possibility of being a lawyer, but it’s not because people tell me I’d succeed at it. I keep an open mind to law because I want to help people—not so I can prove someone else wrong. People’s images of me are oversimplified, reducing my passion for reasoning and debate to a stereotypical lawyer trait, when there is so much more depth to how I present myself and engage with others.
“Why not be a doctor?” My mother jokes about completing the trifecta of prized Asian careers. To my mother, being a doctor would not only guarantee a well-paying job (7-year old me smiles) but also signify that I am a hard-working and smart daughter. Though she may have said this as a joke, I then felt obligated to consider a life in medicine—not foremost because I value saving lives but to make my family happy. And as much as I want to make the people I love happy, I know I have to put my values first.
This pressure to be successful intensifies when I see my siblings. Each of their achievements echo through our family dinners like a bell tolling my uncertain future. My brother with his economics degree works as a paralegal in Chicago. His LSAT scores promise a bright future in law, his career trajectory a hopeful and achievable path. My sister in her senior year at university chose right when she declared computer science. High-paying job offers have pooled in and she hasn’t even graduated; software engineering pays off. She knew her plan since high school: apply as a biology major, and then transfer into computer science. With her solidified offer, she doesn’t need to worry too much about her future.
There it is—engineer, lawyer—all that’s left is doctor. My sister was supposed to be the doctor—but she chose what she wanted to do. Unfortunately, their decisions meant pressure for me, an expectation to live up to them. Now the forecast shifts to me, not necessarily to be a doctor, but to be successful. My family sets a high bar, and I have little choice but to meet it.
Yet somewhere between their expectations and my own uncertainty, I’ve found my own path—or at least the courage to seek it and the humility to embrace it. I am still undecided, but I know what goes into any decision I may make. I dream of academia—of pursuing questions with no clear answers. I also dream of helping people—maybe I will be a lawyer or doctor, but “help” is an unconfined word. I find strength in my openness to possibility: only when I’m open can I find potential success—real fulfillment of my own wants from so many possible choices. I want to be open in what I choose to do, and for now, I’m choosing not to decide just yet.
Now, ten years after Ms. Bell’s first-grade career day, my future career dreams are nowhere similar. By the time I submit this essay, my college decisions will have come out—not my personal decision, but the admission officers’. Alas, I have little “choice” in whether I can attend my dream school or not. In the atmosphere of college applications, the word “undecided” means so much more. My mother may call my four years in Jazz Band a waste of time if I’m not applying to music school, but I choose not to give up on what taught me creativity. My sister may tell me to quit cross country since I have no chance of being recruited, but I choose not to give up on a choice that taught me perseverance. I choose not to create fake “passion projects” related to my college major. I choose not to pretend my path is as straightforward as others’ appear to be. I choose not to listen to people telling me I’ll be disadvantaged in my college application because I don’t have an “aligned enough portfolio”. I grimaced when I first clicked the “undecided” major box on an application, but I find myself defaulting to it more often. If a college doesn’t choose me because of that word, maybe I should never have chosen them in the first place.
In a world where early specialization is in high demand, perhaps there’s bravery in remaining undefined and undecided. My uncharted path isn’t a failure to choose, but a choice in and of itself—a choice to stay open to possibilities, to keep learning broadly, and to grow unconstrained. My choice will honor my family’s metric for success, but more importantly, honor my decision to find success on my own terms. As I grow up, I am not scared to say that career-wise, I still don’t know what I want to be. For now, I choose to be me, and to be me means to be successfully undecided. Now, each “I don’t know” feels like less an admission of failure—and more an affirmation of potential.
References
National Institute of Mental Health. “The Teen Brain: 7 Things to Know.” National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), 2023. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-teen-brain-7-things-to-know.