It’s not easy being a twenty-something. Your parents silently expect you to be at least decently successful; silently because they miraculously nag slightly less now that you’re no longer a teenager. You may have switched majors for the umpteenth time, cursing yourself why you did not take a year off travelling after high school. You still have no idea what you want to be when you grow up. You wanted to be an architect when you were 8, but a cousin misinformed the deadly legal consequences of not designing buildings properly. (See Cynful comic) You wanted to be a rock-star, but you’d never have the time to practice when there are multiple part-time jobs to make ends meet. Your peers have almost everything they want while you are still working hard at it. You suddenly find yourself stuck – as if a car were trying to roll its wheels on a heavily bubble-gum littered track….. Discouraged, you try convincing yourself that you’re a failure. Wait, there’s a red light; Stop.
Look, times have changed. We cannot always get what we want anymore when we want it at this exact instant. It is, however, not the end of the world. To be successful in life, we need
“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” - Charles R. Swindoll
A vision without an opportunity or rather, an opportunity without a vision, is like a cat chasing after its tail. An opportunity without passion is not worth exploring; I have been there – I pushed myself towards an actuarial degree I suddenly had the least interest in towards the end of it. Nothing, however, was gone to waste – the discipline from being trained to think and form good study habits remained. Meanwhile, a vision without passion seems quite half-assed; I would call that day-dreaming. Passion is conviction, dedication and all the other positive -ions. Have I lost you yet? In a nutshell, you need all three; you can’t just have one of or two of the above.
It is not easy being a twenty-something these days. When the economy is at its trough, we are competing with experienced people who are laid-off for jobs. Employers are the one having the better bargaining chip this time. While times seem to be bleak, if you are a law student, studying bankruptcy laws might be a good idea. Opportunities will always be present, but they might not be very obvious. This isn’t the time to wait nor hunt for opportunities; it might be our time to create one. The light has now changed to green, it's race time....
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Seneca (Roman philosopher, mid 1st century AD)
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