You can only fake it for so long before you either have to give up, or start believing in yourself. 

I’m graduating from college in several months, and it’s time I stop faking it. 

I started college with the intentions I would have my undergrad degree in four years, and immediately begin graduate school to pursue counseling. Sure, psychology was interesting to me, but I never actually pictured myself counseling people. It was a nice idea though. Helping people using psychology was a passion of mine, but a career? Not so much. I found the classes exhilarating to say the least, so it wasn’t a matter of whether I enjoyed the subject or not. I loved hearing how to analyze people and find out why people do the things they do. Nevertheless, I had good intentions without thinking realistically. 

For someone who isn’t too fond of going to classes ever, seven (plus) years of college shouldn’t have even been on the table. What was I to do, switch my major to something more practical like business or education – two careers I am not cut out to work in? No. 

Instead, I coasted along within psychology, fascinated with the classes and the theories rather than the actuality of a future.

Writing, however, was just a hobby. I never believed I was talented enough to make it. Journalism is a competitive field, being revolutionized as we speak. It’s difficult to work towards a career you don’t think you’re fit for. And the more I wrote statistical research papers in psych, the more I despised them. This isn’t me, I would think. These papers cannot be my life. Rather, I liked the creative, somewhat-opinionated form of writing.

What doesn’t fly in writing though, is thinking you can’t write. Sure, I can whip out a great theological or investigative paper for a class, but do I have a vocation to be a writer? I won’t know until I start believing in myself. No one wants to interview someone for a job who doesn’t think they belong. You have to want it, and think you deserve it. Whether its writing or teaching or leading, it’s what you want you to do – what you think you are great at.

So here ends the faking it, and here starts my future. And hopefully someone out there deems me worthy of a job in writing.