Dear Members of the Classes of 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013


We will be graduating in one of the worst economic crisis’ of all time and trying to figure out what we will do to support ourselves for the rest of our lives. I am a member of the class of 2011 and I have been thinking about what I want to do with my life. My mind has been racing with thoughts of careers for the past few months. The scary thing about this is, not only is my mind racing with thoughts of careers but with thoughts of dollar signs. The only thing I can think of when I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with my life is how much money I can make. The thought of money is so consuming that when I think of a career path that I may be interested in the first thing I do is Google how much I would make a year. What I don’t think about and can not Google is, will this job make me happy? Will I want to wake up everyday? Will I want to go through years of school to accomplish this career? I like many of you feel like I’m being pushed into these cookie cutter careers of healthcare, education and technology. I want to be a writer one day. I want to walk into Barnes and Noble and see my book in the hands of an eager reader but instead, I will probably become a nurse because I am terrified of being caught up in this economic mess that I can not even face my dream. My greatest dream has turned into my deepest fear. I have never even told anyone close to me that I want to be a writer. My room is filled with journals and drafts of novels. My computer is filled with word documents entitled “ASDFGDFGS” and within these oddly named files is my imagination bubbling to the surface. What will our world be filled with un happy, melancholy nurses, doctors, teachers, and computer technicians dreaming of careers that they we felt were to out of reach. So I am asking you as a member of either the class of 2010, 2011, 2012 or 2013 to follow your dreams, no matter what, for those of us to paralyzed by fear to pursue our own personal legend.