Sami: Making the most of my major

A few years ago, I wanted to be a storyteller, a writer. I had a story, a plot and characters. If you had time, believe me, I could flesh out all those story ideas, explain their origins to you, describe in fine detail my vision of all the characters and plots and show you how I would apply some magic and turn it all into something really awesome.

For at least six years, I’ve been daydreaming, noting hundreds of ideas on sheets of paper and storing them up in a box in my imagination — a personal encyclopedia of to-dos.

My situation, I know, is not unique. Who doesn’t have big plans they never get around to acting on? The grand plan of being a writer was choked as the years passed by the weight of my career. Along the way, I became an engineer, and my writing projects were all going nowhere. In spite of this, I held on to writing because I enjoyed it as much as engineering.

Why do some people’s passions into their careers, and others are left only with daydreams? It might be internal — most people prefer to choose the career that benefits them rather than the one they enjoy doing.

One theory of why people can never actually excel in what they want is because people prefer a comfortable and secure existence to a risky one. Everyone wants to be better off in the future.

Even as I began to do alright as a writer, I naïvely discounted it as something I never intended to stick with, preparing myself for the so-called profession that would eventually define me. When a young person with ambitions like mine has to choose a hard job, it seems to end their artistic skill. Would giving up one career, I wondered, have sharpened my desire to make it as a writer in another?

I won’t lie. For a long time, I considered this an unacceptable outcome — to give up writing to make my career as a computer science engineer.

And then I decided — nothing is going to be sacrificed. I can do both.

“Those who can engineer, can write.” I don’t know if I made up this idea on my own or if someone told me, but the idea has stayed with me. I decided that no career would stop me from writing. Instead of making myself adjust and work for a compromising career, I will make the universe work around me so I can do both. True satisfaction lies when you do what you love.

Writing gives me a healthy, satisfying amount of creative license, as well as a very defined responsibility. It keeps my imagination from flying off into the ether. While engineering helps me measure my abilities, writing helps me sharpen them. Either way, I love both, and wouldn’t give one up for the other. At the core of everything is capturing a real event. A life. That’s how you fill all the gaps in your life.

Now, not everyone has the luxury to invest energy in two extremely different careers, but I hope every student at the university is doing what interests them. Even if you aren’t sure for the moment, each step gets you closer to your destination, to where you belong as a person and discover your direction to a successful career. The key to making things work out is commitment.

Never lose interest in what you commit yourself to, even if it’s a little below or beyond your interest level. Consider it as your path to something that you will eventually love doing. Just stick to your commitments and the promises you make yourself.

Shagufta Sami is a second-year computer science graduate student.