Saturday, August 29, 2015
The Many, Many Problems With “Follow Your Passion”
99u: A lot of career advice is built around slogans like “follow your heart” or “follow your passion.” A popular YouTube video, “What If Money Was No Object?” narrated by British writer Alan Watts, suggests that unless you ask yourself “What makes you itch?” and pursue the answer, you will “spend your life completely wasting your time.”
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This article sounds like pretty good advice for someone who is passionate about something, yet not necessarily talented at it. I understand the point behind the article -- do something you can become good at instead of working in a profession you might not be happy at in a few years -- but I don't think it applies to people at serious art schools. There's a difference between being passionate about something and having it as a hobby, and being passionate about something, using that motivation to pursue what you love, and becoming better at something because of it. The author also makes passion an arts related word, which is not at all necessarily true. I know a lot of people (especially those at Carnegie Mellon) whose passion is math, science, even engineering. They came to this school to learn more about their passion -- and there's plenty of places for them to have long and fulfilling careers. Perhaps this article comes around now because more and more younger kids are becoming obsessed with celebrity and entertainment careers, and believe their passion will guarantee them a spot in the business.
I went through college knowing exactly what I wanted to do and the steps that would lead me there. I was following my passions daily. But I didn’t feel this courage or certainty in my choice for the future when I graduated from high school. I was at a loss of what to do. So I went with what I was passionate about. I asked myself, what do I get excited about? What do I love doing? Those questions brought me to where I am now. So I think that the “following your passion” statement is important for everyone to ask himself. I view it as happiness. I am a firm believer in going to work happy. If you’re not happy with your life change it. I don’t understand the pressure of working towards something to become good at it early in life if you aren’t happy. So I say follow your passions to wherever they may lead you.
This is probably the wrong article for a school full of students who's motto is "my heart is in the work", but ill attempt to address this head-on. This article is absolutely ridiculous. Even the points that were mentioned that I would atleast attempt to agree with I didnt see enough support behind them other than "it just doesn't make sense to go for a competitive job". Why attempt to run away from competitive jobs if competive jobs are the ones that legitimately garner interest from people? It sounds more like an attempt to stifle creativity and passion more than an attempt to actually guide people in a "better" direction. I'm also a little bit confused/annoyed by the notion that people only have ONE passion, which is kind of the way that the article describes it. There is a difference between a hobby and a career interest. People can be interested in something and want to have a job in that field, even if it is competitive, and I think that telling them "no" is just a way to open up the path for more people to attempt to get into that position.
I agree that pursuing a career in a field you enjoy is much more than just "following your passion" in that it requires a practical and realistic outlook. Too much emphasis is placed on going into a field that you love and not enough is placed on figuring out what exactly you love. For example, the article mentions that you might be an avid athlete without necessarily pursuing a professional sports career. However, it doesn't mention that looking to sports for potential career options might not be a complete waste of time. There are many valuable skills and outlets, such as leadership, teamwork, and perseverence, that are used when playing a sport. Therefore, someone who excelled in soccer in high school might not want to be a professional soccer player but could still use the same skills he or she used on the field as a research scientist or a foreign ambassador.
I was raised in an environment that often confused the concepts of "aptitude" and "passion". Whenever one of my friends would tell their parents that I had aced a recent biology test, I would inevitably be informed that I must really have a great passion for biology. Eventually the lines between excelling at something and enjoying something blurred, and I completely missed the fact that - given the choice - I would never touch biology again beyond high school.
Just as my concept of "passion" was skewed, I think this article is operating under an imperfect and lopsided premise. The article read as though pursuing a passion, and having a job in another field were mutually exclusive things. That if you had no aptitude for your passion, your passion essentially amounted to a dead end. By no means am I advocating for the rampant pursuit of whims, but I feel this article improperly framed a passion, and was too narrow in its perspective.
I agree with the article but in many ways I don’t. I think what the article was trying to say was that having just the one passion for something sometimes isn’t enough. I think that in order to succeed in things you are passionate about you must be passionate about other things too like being a good friend or being a colleague. Things like this are often forgotten as we selfishly push towards our goal/”passion”.
For example a family member of mine is very passionate about what she wants to do but does not have enough talent or drive to do it. I feel like she expects the success to land right into her lap because she thinks she is above the work. Meanwhile I see students here at CMU, the best of the best, working harder everyday because they know they can do better and they are passionate about being the best at what they do.
If the article had talked more about how to succeed at your passion rather than to fail at it I think I would have agreed with their message. Like some have commented, in entertainment it is hard to find the balance between a passion and a Job. To me and I’m sure to many here, our job is to share our passion with the world and it pains us to hear that sometimes that’s not possible.
The article and video said very different things, and while I understand what the article said about the difficulty of finding a job that is in line with your passion, I agree wholeheartedly with the video, and believe that what makes us tick and keeps us engaged is something worth pursuing, even at the risk of living with little.
I agree with Amanda, in that the careers we see as possibilities in high school have more to do with aptitude than engagement and passion. I did well in physics, and considered following that track into college. Yet the video spoke about using work to keep yourself engaged, present, invested, and to do meaningful work, and I think the only way to keep true to that is to follow one’s passion. Or, at least, educate yourself deeply about it and have gained the depth of knowledge and experience that will make it possible to lead an interesting and engaging life forward.
We have all come to this school because we claim to be passionate about what we do and we want to chase our dreams. And as much as I hate to hear the reality that what the average human is really passionate about has limited job prospects, I can’t ignore the truth. What I don’t agree with this article is how it defines passions. It gives off the impression that people are passionate about these highly specific jobs, locking them in to only one interest. When I hear the phrase, “follow your passion” I have always understood the word passion to be a blank term. In other words follow the subject you feel fulfilled in. The article was right when they stated what someone likes today might not necessary be what someone likes today and what they will like in twenty years. But I don’t think that change in desire is incredibly dramatic for someone looking at the job market. By that point in anyone’s life they have their likes and dislikes down for the most part after several years of structured education and have in theory been exposed to lots of different career paths. So if they chase after the area of which they find most interesting then I believe they will find what is most engaging and allow them to explore different careers that follow the same path. Idealistically if this is done right no one should ever feel “burnt out” from their passion.
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