I'm at the point in my college career where I say, "I think I messed up."

In my naivety, I did not envision that finding life's path could ever be so hard, so depressing or so unnerving. I imagined my future would open up and bare itself to me like a fresh pink flower on the first day of spring: here I am, pick me! But it has not, and I have dappled in one major after the next hoping to find my calling.

I like my major. I enjoy it. It's fun, I'm creative, it works. Yet the more I delve deeper into the world of design and photography, the less I look forward to finding a career in said field. I absolutely love photography; I think pictures have the power to change the world. If someone came up to me and said, "Here's lots of money, go take some pictures" I'd be content till I passed on but that's not a likely situation. Designing logos, pasting them on letterhead and measuring mounting board really isn't doing it for me. Everyone keeps on telling me that the big money is in advertising and I loathe advertising. In marketing, the entire focus is how to get people to buy your product with no mention of the environmental and physical impact of these products on people and the earth. I don't want to work for a conglomerate and have my ass on the line for every ad I design. I want to make a difference somehow, and I do not define difference as increasing a company's revenue due to a good advertisement. More and more I'm falling for my minor, psychology. I love it. I read my textbooks even when there is no reading assigned just because I love the material. I've grown partial to journalism and mass communications but I'm starting to feel like my heart is not in it. Maybe photography is best kept as a hobby while I'm pursuing other things.

Sometimes I feel like I know everything and other times I don't have a clue. I underestimated design a lot. I still enjoy it, but I don't know if I have a passion for it. I want to work with people. I want to work with obesity, diseases, genetics, mental disorders and chemical addictions. These subjects to me are fascinating and I don't think I could ever tire of them, although I'm hesitant to say never. Now that I'm a junior and it's too late to change my major, should I settle for less? Settling is not what I want to do but sometimes it's unavoidable. Life doesn't always give you what you want and we can't all live in a Disney cartoon. In a job, I only want to be happy and to be able to support myself. When I'm in front of the computer, toying with a design for hours after printing and printing the design again I am not very happy. I know that it's impossible to be happy all the time, but the feeling is less like a bad day and more like an unsettling guttural instinct that this is not that I was meant for. Who knows, maybe I need more meditation.