I know the feeling well. I started university initially as a BFA in Visual Art, but the work wasn't all that interesting. I love drawing, but I found myself clashing with some of the staff on the subject of what makes something art or not. Many of them were less interested in art for art's sake than they were assigning meaning to every line, colour, shape, etc., even in cases where there was little reason to do so or where there was a clear lack of evidence of meaning beyond a poorly constructed argument. I never disagreed with them that art must mean something, only that not every meaning required a lengthy and pretentious argument to explain why.
I moved on, took Japanese language, history, and culture classes out of personal interest, and even went to Japan on an exchange trip. I didn't find anything worth sticking with, career-wise. I never had any interest in teaching English.
I was burned out and didn't know what to do, so I took a year off to work a retail job in a big-box toy store. However, after seeing first hand some of the people who were stuck in retail for life and how hopeless, bitter, and unreasonable some of them were, I felt I needed to go back to university. If not for the sake of a career, at least, for the sake of my own growth as a person. I really didn't want to become some bitter self-important asshole like the ones I worked for who thought that because they were managers of a store, they knew-it-all and were all powerful, and thus were allowed to act like shithead dictators to all of their employees. I've done my best to avoid working in big-box retail outlets since then (I work currently part time at an independent vintage video game store, and as a soccer referee on most nights for a U19 rec league).
I went back to university, took Anthropology for awhile, thinking that it may have been culture I was interested in when I studied Japanese. It was interesting for awhile, but the writings were beginning to grate on my nerves. I read way too many wordy and overcomplicated ethnographies that tried to pretend they were much more complex than just a person simply observing and taking notes. The best ones were written like stories, both informative and lucid.
After getting fed up with Anthropology, I took a few Philosophy classes on a whim, looking for existential answers and possible story ideas. I loved it immediately. It was the first time I ever actually cared about writing essays; where an essay wasn't simply an obstacle to free time or something else. I ended up writing a 26 or so page essay on the subject "what is art?" to start with, along with a great deal of other papers on subjects I personally cared about later on. It was the first time I took something for my own sake rather than what was expected of me or might have paid well. I majored in it, and after a lot of hard work, I am graduating this Spring.
Career wise, a Philosophy degree will do nothing for me on its own. I am not naive, and I despise the commonly-held belief that universities are or should be nothing more than vocational factories. If a person goes to a university expecting a job to be handed out at the end, then they are simply wasting both their and their teacher's time. A person ought to be going for her/his own sake, but because of the continued cutting of public funding, the unnecessary increases in administrative salaries, and the subsequent increase in tuition rates, as a result, everyone's chances to do just that are being hurt.
I am already putting the skills and knowledge I earned to use. I care a lot about the world, life, and people. What I want to do is to bring critical thought back to the forefront. I want to strike back at those who would rather keep us ignorant and devoid of life. I want to help heal this world instead of contributing further to its degradation through inaction and apathy. A good philosopher, to me, is one who practices rather than merely thinks. I can't say I've done as much of the former as I've done of the latter, but whether it be through story, picture, essay, article, or speech, I'm going to at least do what I can.
I'm applying to the two-year Journalism program at the university. If I make it in, that's fine. If I don't, that's fine too. Wealth has never been an objective of mine (as long as I got enough to survive on and pick up the occasional novel or two, I'm content). One way or another, I'm going to do what I can.
