Identity Synecdoche Syndrome (ISS)

College is coming up. And everyone knows what that means: it's time to choose a major! Most of my friends (at least seem to) have a major all picked out. Some of them know they want to be a chemist, or a biologist, or a civil engineer, or a meterologist or a... Well, you get the point.

I, on the other hand, am sitting here thinking, "What the hell do I want to BE?"

Then it struck me. My major will not be who I am. It won't even be half of who I am. My major is just a small set of classes I'm going to be taking over the next few years in college. It decides what goes on my diploma. What I do with that major is purely up to me.

I'm going to call the sort of thinking that got me here Identity Synecdoche Syndrome, or ISS for short. ISS is the belief that one part of myself is what makes up all of me. For example, for me in this case, the belief was "I am a chemist/physicist/psychologist/monk, and nothing more." That's such a one dimensional outlook on life. I may have the career / major of any of those things, but what I do with that career, and what I do outside of that career will also largely define my life.

I've been thinking about this because I don't know what I'd do with a degree in physics or chemistry. I don't know how I would take that out into the "real" world. But a degree from a college is more multi-purpose than that. I can take a degree and go into writing, into politics, into humanitarian work, or into journalism. My path isn't limitted to "doing science" in the strictest sense. That's reassuring to me.

But it still doesn't answer my question of, "What do I want to be when I grow up?" Though I do know I want to be 3D.

Namaste.