In my head I have lived tens of careers. I have been the editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine, a graphic designer, an architect, a lawyer, an esteemed journalist, an art museum curator, a best-selling author, an influencer, the list goes on. I sit in my bed and get lost in website tabs googling what the profession is like, how much you get paid, how long you have to go to school to do it, notable people in the field, likelihood of success. I get drunk with the possibility of what could be if I follow down that path. What would my life look like as an urban planner? As a journalist? As a lawyer? Where would I live? Who would I know? What would my house look like? Who would I help? What would I do?
I’m a dreamer so I get carried away sometimes. Every time I think of myself in one of these careers it feels as though I wasn’t destined to do anything else, but the career of recent obsession. A couple months ago, I decided that I wanted to become a lawyer. I had, admittedly, been binge watching Suits--a show about a group of lawyers based in NYC at a powerful farm starring the one and only Meghan Markle, however I insisted that my recent binge had nothing to do with my chosen career choice! I was meant to be a lawyer! Where else would I put my unrelenting skills of banter to use? What did the constant back and forth with friends who were willing to do so about the most trivial arguments amount to if I did not decide to become a lawyer?
So, I emailed the head of pre-law students at my school. I told her my whole coming-of-age story about how I had started late with my interest in law, but I’d always had a tiny inclination towards it and now I was deciding to finally put all of my energy towards it and requested that she put me on the pre-law students email listserv. She responded with, “Will do.”
And I was on my way.
I called my mom and told her the big news, I had finally figured out what I wanted to do with my life. I answered her age old question of “How are you going to make money with an environmental studies degree?” I was excited to call her, to finally offer some form of stability and let her know that I’d figured it out. However, I emphasized to her not to get her hopes up or get too attached to the idea of me being a lawyer because it was subject to change.
Shortly after I texted an old friend, an alum of my school, and asked her if she could steer me in the right direction for how to get started with pre-law at Swat. It was Halloween, a Friday, I…was in bed, but that’s another story! She was busy, but she got back to me the next morning! She kept her promise and gave me a hefty, but helpful, response. Turns out there’s no such thing as environmental law as a degree so you just get a general J.D. Anywho! That kinda knocked the shit out of me a little bit, lol. Made me think about if law was something I really wanted to do, and not just because Elle Woods and the cast of Suits made it look (for extreme lack of better words) sexy.
Soon after that, I decided I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I broke the news to my mom over Facetime, she was unmoved. She didn’t get attached. On a serious note, my mom has been extremely patient with me throughout undergrad. She’s never questioned me extensively about my studies or been upset with me when I changed my mind about what I want to do. She only questions after I initiate conversation about future plans and career goals and even still she comes from a place of giving advice and never telling me what I should do with my career or my life. I’m extremely appreciative of that because it’s really given me the ability to put the pieces together for myself without second guessing my interests or my plan.
Getting back to the program, being a lawyer was out..for now. I sat down with myself and realized that I don’t have a passion for practicing law. I have a nerdy interest in law, but I don’t care about it enough to suffer through studying for the LSAT, competing through law school, and then practicing law. I wish I could just sit in on law classes though. So many people have law degrees even though they’re not lawyers because understanding the law is integral to anything we do no matter the field, so it's a good background to have. Plus I think law school can make you pretty charismatic, but maybe I’ve watched too much How to Get Away with Murder (shoutout Wes the LOML. in this household we pretend Wes and Laurel never happened). (**After editing this a month later, having started a rewatch of the show, Wes is no longer the LOML…)
So, if not law then what? To be real with you, I don’t know. I’ve known for a long time that what I want to do probably doesn’t have a title. I’ve also known that I’m meant to be multi-hyphenated. I know that at my core what I want to do is write. Writing is painful, it is hard, it is time consuming, but it is magic. It is thoughtful, it is detailed, it is powerful, it is essential.
I decided that I want to be a journalist. And you know this if you read my previous blog, so I won’t bore you with the details. I’ve put myself in a pickle though because like environmental studies and law, journalism is a broad field. There are many different types of journalist with many different niches and so now I’m navigating where I fit into all that.
I’ve spent my entire winter break writing. Not for fun, but for applications. I’m applying to a couple of fellowships, one that pays for grad school, and the applications are all about my future plans. Piece of cake right? WRONG. I came into these apps thinking that I knew exactly what I wanted to do, it’s just a matter of writing it down, but I was wrong. I know the general gist of what I want to do--environmental justice blah blah blah you know my spiel, but the thing about me is that I struggle with the specifics. This is a major flaw of my writing skills. I say really broad things, but don’t get into the specifics, the “so-what?!”
As I was filling out my application, I realized that I was not being specific with my answers. Like I said, environmental justice is a broad field, so I had to ask myself, “what do you want to do?” How do you fit into the puzzle of this movement? What unique lane do you carve out and want to focus on. The problem with me is not that I don’t know what I want to do, it’s quite the opposite really. I want to do so much! I’m interested in so many things and that is the problem I always run into. I find a niche, but my niche has niches and I can’t choose!
I’ve worked on this application every other day all-day since Christmas, when I’m writing this it’s January 8th, 2024. This application is taking time. It requires me to devote hours at a time, then take a day away so I can give myself space to breathe and sit with what I’ve written. I’m talking straight writing from 10am to 9pm. Writing, then editing, then researching, and then writing some more. Writing is a thought process and I’ve had to spend hours writing to write myself into exactly what I’m trying to say. It requires writing sentences and then editing my sentences to get more and more specific after each edit and I’m quite literally mining for gold. That is the rewarding part of writing. Everyone starts off with a mine, it's just a matter of who sits there and keeps chipping away pieces until they strike gold. (or however the fuck mining works we shouldn’t be doing that anyways)
It feels good to know what I want. It feels good to know that it’s authentically me. Another problem I ran into was writing what I thought the people on the fellowship board wanted to hear. While technically what I wrote was good, it didn’t feel like me. While I cared deeply about the things I wrote about originally, it was not passion.
No matter if I get the fellowships or not, I’m grateful I’m going through this process now. The research I’ve done on possible career fields has allowed me to learn so much about what’s happening in the Black environmentalist sphere. There are so many cool organizations and that gives me hope for the future. It’s also taught me that I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. I thought that what I wanted to do didn’t have a title, well…it does, it just comes with many different names, but the role is the same.
I learned that at my core, I want to be a writer. I was worried that journalism isn’t a stable career, but baby we’re living in a recession and ludacris inflation. Most careers are not thriving financially, so what the hell! I might as well do something that makes me happy and that can bring about change. I get so stressed out with this process because I feel like I talk so much about what I plan to do and I’m not actually doing it. Well, scratch that, I am doing it though. I’m writing right now. Moreso, this made me want to figure out the ways to start working towards my plan now. It’s exciting! I could lie and say I’ve never had a dream career that I’m working towards, lol, but in all honesty, I’ve clarified what I want to do. Now, life is life so I can’t guarantee that just because I have a plan everything will work out as planned, but it feels good to have something to look forward to and to be working towards. It feels good to know that I’m gonna take a risk and try something out.
I want to go to grad school now! That was something that I was adamant about not doing because I’m lowkey over academia after being in such rigorous schools all my life. I didn’t want to waste money going to grad school since I didn’t know what I wanted to do. However, now after spending the last two weeks thinking only about my future plans, it’s made me realize that I do want to go. I found a program I really like and now all I have to do is try to get a couple published clips so I have some to use for my application.
I worry that the only thing that’s been holding me back from being adamant about being a writer is fear. Fear that other people will think I’m making a stupid choice, fear that I’ll look back in ten years and think I was naive, fear that I’ll disappoint my mom, fear that I’ll watch everyone around me be successful and happy with stable careers and I’ll be the dummy who decided to write instead of doing something more practical. But, I’m projecting all of those things onto myself. That noise isn’t coming from anybody but me and my own insecurity. I am secure in knowing that I will figure everything out, I’m just worried it might be a bumpy ride, but you know what, I’m down for that (also very down for a smooth one).
I told myself that I have to think outside the box. That’s part of the reason I wanted to go to law school. In Suits, Harvey Spector, the arrogant but loveable successful partner at the firm, says that when someone has a gun to your head trying to blackmail you, you may think you have two options--do what they ask or get shot, but in reality you have hundreds. All of that is to say, when you’re backed into a corner your job is to be creative with problem solving. To find another way. To think outside the box. That’s how I want to be. I want to think of something so crazy it won’t work, but be able to actually make it work by putting in the work. Choosing between a career I’ll enjoy and being practical feels like I’m putting the gun to my own head. What if it can be both? What if I can make that happen?
This is a dramatic way of me saying that I am going to pursue writing! I get inspiration from the new people across fields, especially in music, who break through all the time even after getting told that the field is over-saturated. Of course it’s over-saturated. Everything is over-saturated. There’s 8 billion of us. However comma, I have to keep reminding myself that as long as it feels right I have to keep pursuing it. Spending even a second doing something I don’t enjoy that’s not in pursuit of a larger goal of mine is a waste of the one life I am given.
So, that’s where I am. I’m excited to see where I’ll be, but even more excited to be present as I go along for the ride.
Hasta la vista,
Kayla
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