Growing up, my mother hated it when I came home from school and told her about my new career plan. "You’re always jumping from one thing to another," she would say.

In elementary school, I vowed to become the first Jewish president, but when I calculated how long I would have to wait until I could run, 2018 seemed just too far off.

In middle school, I devoted myself to becoming an architect. I made my own drafting board, sketched plans for my parents’ dream house and made models with foam core. But by the time I finished middle school, my artistic talent still hadn’t developed, and I once again turned to other prospective careers.

Each time I changed gears and aimed toward something new, my mother expressed her aversion of my mercurial interests with more and more fervor. After several career adjustments and repeated lectures, her complaints started to plague my mind, and her uneasiness began to affect me as well.

But when I reached high school, I pushed my mother’s fears into the back of my mind, because this time I had chosen the perfect career: Journalism. I edited the school newspaper, participated in writing workshops and applied for internships. Through it all, I saw myself one day covering presidential politics.

My high school journalism class poses on a trip to New York in November 2000. Photo  by Diane Davis

My peers eyed me with jealousy, because I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and I had a plan.

Then I entered college. I looked at my teachers’ backgrounds, the lives of real journalists, and realized that no newspaper would hire me as a White House correspondent anytime soon.

Still unsure of my plans for the future, I declared journalism as my major and began learning how to write a lede and where to put a nut graph. I used these skills in my reporting on parking and construction for the campus paper, and I amassed clips from internships with local publications.

But after experiencing life as a reporter, I came to a conclusion: I liked journalism, but I didn't want to be a journalist. I enjoyed gathering facts and searching for the truth, but the prospect of living a journalist’s life seemed daunting. I liked the idea of a fast-paced lifestyle, but the intensity of journalism would prevent me from enjoying my life.

And as these thoughts crossed my mind, so did all my mother’s lectures about choosing a career. I could hear her asking me, "What can you do with a degree in journalism if you don’t want to be a journalist?"

A look at my transcript thus far showed I was on track to graduate early, so to give myself more time to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I added a major.

I supplemented my schedule with government and politics classes to prolong my time in school before graduation, but it made sense. Like my mother’s criticisms that never quite left the back of my mind, my dreams of working in politics never died either.

As odd as it seems, the decision to not become a reporter was actually my first step in choosing a career. It was the impetus for my added major, which led to the study of a whole new field of interest.

I still do not know what job I will hold five years from now, but I know it will involve the media and government. I may not have chosen my future place of employment, but I have chosen my career.

So, when I come home from school after graduation, my mother won’t have to hear another career change announcement. My mind is finally at ease.