{"id":37558,"date":"2019-03-01T08:55:15","date_gmt":"2019-03-01T13:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=37558"},"modified":"2019-03-01T08:55:15","modified_gmt":"2019-03-01T13:55:15","slug":"posts-on-posts-part-2-uncertainty-doubt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2019\/03\/01\/posts-on-posts-part-2-uncertainty-doubt\/","title":{"rendered":"Posts on POSts Part 2: Uncertainty & Doubt"},"content":{"rendered":"Last week<\/a>, I talked about the technical side to enrolling in a Program of Study (POSt). This week, I'm talking about the other side of enrollment: the side that involves uncertainty, doubt, and trying to figure out what's right for you.\r\n\r\nFor some students choosing a POSt is easy, but for many of us it isn't. People sometimes underestimate the mental energy it takes to make a big decision, especially if you're not entirely sure if your decision is the right one.\r\n\r\n
\"A<\/a>
Deciding on a POSt would be easier if we were psychic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nThe first thing my younger brother said to me when I told him I was majoring in Anthropology was, \u201cDo you want fries with that?\u201d Although it was easy to attribute this snarky comment to sibling rivalry at first, I quickly realized that he wasn\u2019t the only person in my family who felt this way towards my prospective program. My father said, \u201cWhat on earth are you going to use your degree for?\u201d shortly after I announced my decision over dinner.\r\n\r\nMaybe you have even expressed this same sentiment towards someone in your life at some point: a friend, a co-worker, or a family member. Or maybe, deep down, you\u2019ve felt this way about yourself and your own academic choices. I know that I have, and sometimes I still do.\r\n\r\nI started off my university journey by studying Archaeology and Biology, because these subjects are considered more science-y, and because I had some very loose connections to people working in these fields. Even though these subjects still garnered the \u201cfries with that\u201d question, I managed to get off pretty lightly since I was appealing to the career aspirations some of my friends and family had when they were kids. Anthropology doesn't really share this: I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever met a kid who said, \u201cI wanna be a socio-cultural anthropologist when I grow up!\u201d\r\n\r\n
\"A<\/a>
Obligatory food stock photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nI wasn't happy in my first year of studies. Although persistent effort helped me get by in high school sciences classes, for whatever reason it wasn\u2019t helping me get by at U of T. Had you asked me a couple years ago why I thought this was, I probably would\u2019ve told you that it\u2019s because I wasn\u2019t trying hard enough. Now I look back and I know that my heart just wasn\u2019t in it.\r\n\r\nLook at any online forum for university or college students and you\u2019ll probably see that the concept of pursuing a degree you\u2019re passionate about is a very heated and divisive topic. Some people will chew you out for not being a STEM major, and others will congratulate you for having the courage to pursue the arts. To be honest, both seem deprecating. I have stumbled upon countless Reddit threads called\r\n\u201cPeople with useless degrees, what do you do now?\u201d In these same threads, anonymous users fight over what makes a degree useless or not. But I think that this is beside the point.\r\n\r\n
\"A<\/a>
One of many threads on this topic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nYou more than likely want a degree that will put food on your table and a roof over your head. At the same time, you probably want to do something with your life that will make you feel like your time at university was well spent and makes you feel fulfilled. For some people this is STEM, but for many others it\u2019s not. If your family is like mine, then they also probably want you to survive and thrive. However, what they\r\nthink is time well spent might differ from what you believe in. The ever-increasing generation gap plays a big part on life perspectives.\r\n\r\nSo, no one seems to respect your academic choices. What do you do?\r\n\r\nFind like-minded people. Nothing feels more validating than knowing that there are other people out there who share your interests, including professors who\u2019ve made entire careers out of these \u201cuseless\u201d subjects. Realize that you don\u2019t always need validation from people who don\u2019t understand why you want to do what you want to do. Don\u2019t set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\nLast week, I talked about the technical side to enrolling in a Program of Study (POSt). This week, I'm talking about the other side of enrollment: the side that involves uncertainty, doubt, and trying to figure out what's right for…\n<\/div>
Continue reading “Posts on POSts Part 2: Uncertainty & Doubt”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>
Continue reading “Posts on POSts Part 2: Uncertainty & Doubt”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":356,"featured_media":37702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6669,1,58,6480,67,68],"tags":[589,445,692,23804,450,1687,25365,1502,13585,10815],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37558"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/356"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37558"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37747,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37558\/revisions\/37747"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}