College paves road to happiness
Campus Times
September 25, 1998
How many times have people asked, "What do you want to do once
you graduate from college?"
I cannot count the number of times I have been asked that question.
My response has, for the most part, been the same every time: I want to
write for a magazine, maybe Rolling Stone, maybe Entertainment
Weekly. Sometimes I decide I may want to go the newspaper route.
This past weekend a revelation hit me. I have an internship as a public
relations writer at the Los Angeles County Fair. My job is to attend all
of the hula hoop contests, cookie baking contests, spelling bees -- you
name it -- I cover it. So here I am covering the family ice cream making
contest and Wayne, a photographer employed by the Fair that I often run
into, sits down next to me. The contest got long and tedious, so we began
chit-chatting. The infamous question arose and I answered the same way.
I asked about his career and he began to tell me an interesting background
to his career.
Wayne started fresh out of high school as a wedding photographer and
was soon a photojournalist for a great publication, with a terrific salary,
a wife, children, nice suits and ties -- the whole nine yards.
He promised himself that by the age of 30 he would have a $50,000 home,
swimming pool and basically the perfect life. With his wonderful job, working
a trillion hours a week, he got burnt out. He realized this one day when
he was hurriedly driving and saw a grungy man with a knapsack smoking a
"dubee." He asked the man what he was doing, where he was going
and the man told him he had no idea, and that it was great being free.
Wayne realized he envied the man's freedom and enjoyment of life, so
he quit his job, sold everything he owned, bought a car and headed up to
the mountains. He did what he wanted, where he wanted, for the next two
years, including growing his hair long, partying hard and taking photos
of the ski slopes in the winter.
He tired of this and decided to change his life once again. Anyways,
the story goes on and Wayne is now more than 60 years old and working as
a freelance photographer, travelling with his wife a few months out of the
year from fair to fair.
He spends time either in his home up north, doing independent work for
magazines or travelling all over the world. He is happy and loving life.
He went to his 45th high school reunion recently where his classmates were
talking about being close to retirement age. At this point in his story,
he looked at me, smiled and said "Pardon me, but if someone loves sex,
are they going to give it up just because they've reached a certain age?
I don't want to retire. I love what I'm doing."
It was at this point that I realized life is much longer with much more
opportunity than I would like to believe. My mind thought, prior to my conversation
with Wayne, in terms of childhood, college, career, family, death -- exactly
in that order. Two nights ago I came across an article "Some Moms Who
Made It" in the Columbia Journalism Review. It pictured many successful
journalists/mothers. Beneath the captions it said the age of the mother
and her children. Many were successful woman who were in their late 40s
with young children. Rather than finding this article promising, I became
disenchanted with the thought, first of all, of starting a family so late
in life, and secondly, being many years out of college before getting into
a high profile position.
But after talking with Wayne I realize that I may not graduate from
college and walk into a writing position with Rolling Stone. I may
spend a few years as a staff writer covering city council meetings.
Another possibility is that I may have completely different career goals
20 years from now. All of this is OK though, because I have the rest of
my life to figure out what I love to do. I have time to make the wrong decision
and to climb the journalistic totem pole. Then again, I could end up somewhere
I love right after graduation. I just hope that at the age of 65 I look
at my job as a hobby and would not think of retiring. Because of this enlightening
conversation with a man I hardly know, I realize that college is not the
means to a high paying career, but a paved road with many turn offs to my
final destination: happiness.
Jennifer Parsons, a junior journalism major, is editor in chief of
the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at parsonsj@ulv.edu.
