Five Reasons to Persue Your Passion

By Jeremy Bender on February 24, 2013

‘Follow your passion!’

This adage is routinely thrown around all grades in all schools across America, as if showcasing to students that this is one of the main goals of public education. Once we arrive in college, though, these three light little words are quickly replaced by the much heavier ‘study what will get you hired.’

For a lucky few in specific fields – doctors, engineers, and actuaries, I’m looking at you – ‘passion’ and ‘job’ line up quite neatly. What about for the rest of us? Should all would be English majors swallow the bitter dregs of their dreams and study a more marketable field instead?

No, a thousand times no. Here are five reasons why following your passion for your undergraduate degree is always worth it.

    1. Once you leave your undergraduate education, you may never really have a chance to pursue a passion again so concretely. Sure, you may always have time to read books or blogs about the evolution of the Yoruba society in Nigeria post-colonization, or about game theory, but chances are you won’t have the same motivation to fully explore the subject matter as you would in a class you genuinely enjoy. You also may not have access to the same quality materials as you would while a student. What about those pursuing a Masters or PhD? Surely it’s worth studying a subject you might not like in undergrad to be able to follow your passion in even higher levels of education… Law school, anyone?
    2. Except, Masters and PhD programs work like this: they are either follow ups from an undergraduate education in some way – in which case I sincerely hope you’re following a passion, otherwise you have a long six years ahead of you minimum – or they are not necessarily related at all to what you previously studied, giving you free reign to follow a passion in the relatively stress free undergraduate years. As one professor put it to me, Masters programs are the money makers of universities – except for specialty programs that require prerequisites, most will be happy to take your money despite your double major in Swahili and Latin American Studies. This leaves you open to pursue at least a minor in a corollary passion before fully committing to studying something you will use for the rest of your life.
    3. Then again, how often do you think people use what they study in college? What percentage of people are hired in fields they actually prepared for and studied? After graduation, only 40% of job seekers found a full-time job that employed them in their prospective area of study. On top of that, a full one-third of students went on to land jobs in industries that did not require a degree. These statistics shouldn’t make you beat your head against the wall; instead, view this as an excuse to get that degree in Art History or Entomology you always wanted. Ultimately, there is one thing that is always much more important than what you studied.
    4. The skills you acquired during your education will be what separates you from your peers. For this reason it is important to branch out, explore, and get experience in as many fields – no matter how disparate they might be – as possible. Often times, it is surprisingly easy to stitch together multiple passions to make yourself ideal for a job. For example, I studied Middle Eastern History at Rutgers and spent a summer in Turkey as a result. My senior year, desperate for jobs, I applied for an internship with MTV at a job fair only to have the people working the desk ask me why I was even bothering. Two weeks later I had an interview with the International Social Responsibilities Unit, which I fumbled through miserably; however, I got the internship by forwarding the interviewer a piece I wrote for my school’s website about my time in Turkey – she loved it. Fast forward, and after graduation I had a short lived employment as a social media head for a new start-up company. Despite never having studied business, I won the position due to my experience at MTV. That’s how the job search really works – connections, and experience maps. So, with that in mind, by all means study what you love, because if you don’t…
    5. You might regret it forever. This doesn’t just apply to what you study in college either, but to all facets of your undergraduate experience. Is there an internship you want in a completely unrelated field? Go for it! The worst that happens is you waste an interviewers time and you gain precious interview experience – the best is that you get experience in an unrelated field to what you are lovingly studying. There is no reason to be bound by what you study – especially since the world at large doesn’t truly care.

So, with that in mind, chase your passions. Statistically, you’re likely to end up in a job you didn’t prepare yourself for anyway.

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