Wednesday, May 25, 2022 — 5
Michigan in Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
What will I be?
TIAN YEUNG
MiC Columnist
Content
warning:
mention
of
suicide.
Fourteen-year-old me was an
anxious wreck with a negative
outlook on life and my future.
Despite my pessimism, on the day of
career matching, I was hopeful that
my result would ease the stress I had
about choosing a career. I thought I
could use this as an opportunity to
finally have some idea of what to do
with my life.
Well, I got my hopes up for
nothing because the day didn’t go
as planned. A quiz from my school’s
“trustworthy”
career
planning
program told me I was supposed
to be a comedian. My heart sank
and my mind raced at this result.
How was I, an extremely shy and
introverted person, going to be a
comedian? I didn’t believe I had a
sense of humor. In fact, “funny” was
the last adjective anyone would use
to describe me, as I always wore a
solemn expression. All this absurd
match did was intensify my anxiety.
Since the school couldn’t give me
sensible advice about my future, I
turned to the most credible source I
had: my dad. He is a well-respected
and successful professor. His career
has remained stable over the years,
and he seems to enjoy his job well
enough. For those reasons, I decided
to ask him what job might suit me
best.
To my disappointment, I found
him to be no help at all. He simply
told me to “follow what I love doing.”
What did that mean? I didn’t know
what I loved doing. Nothing made
my heart sing enough that I’d want
to build a career out of it.
With no clear career goal in
my mind, I went through the first
three years of high school telling
everyone I wanted to be a doctor. It
wasn’t because I was in love with
the idea of helping the sick restore
their health. I was merely good at
biology and didn’t hate it as much
as other subjects, which, of course,
was not the same thing as loving it.
At the time, many of my friends also
aspired to be doctors because it has
always been seen as a respectable
career. Consequently, I thought
becoming a doctor was a reasonable
target.
My career goal only changed after
I took a psychology course during
the summer before my senior year of
high school. Unlike natural sciences
like biology, where information is
more black and white due to concrete
results
from
experimentation,
psychology sits somewhere in the
shades of gray. I found this quality
intriguing, as it reflects psychology’s
seeming impossibility: trying to
understand intangible aspects of
human nature, such as love and
happiness.
Since I was trying to understand
what it meant to love something
enough that I’d be willing to do it for
the rest of my life, I thought perhaps
psychology could give me some
guidance. I decided then to study
the subject and traded becoming a
doctor for a career more related to
the human mind. However, what
exactly that was, I didn’t know. My
decision to study psychology lasted
until I was about to graduate from
college, when I had to reevaluate my
life again.
Another chapter break in life
meant another headache. Up until
recently, I was struggling with post-
graduation plans. Should I continue
studying psychology or try related
fields, like law or social work? Or,
should I take a break from school?
Maybe I could find a job or an
exchange program. I didn’t know
how to answer these questions.
The only thing I knew was that my
anxiety escalated.
I became an insomniac. There
were days when I would stay up
for 48 hours straight, worrying
about what I should do with my
life, before finally tiring myself out
to sleep. Nothing seemed to break
this unhealthy cycle, no amount of
exercise, medication or chamomile
tea. I felt lost and afraid of making a
wrong decision about my future.
Feeling like I was wasting time
during the night when my mind could
not shut off, I eventually decided to
do something productive. I started
taking shifts as a counselor at Crisis
Text Line — an online platform that
provides real-time counseling —
where I answered texts from people
who were struggling in their lives.
Surprisingly, supporting “texters”
helped me gain perspective on my
own situation.
I realized I wasn’t alone in feeling
lost; many texters felt the same.
This realization eased some of my
anxiety. I also learned that whenever
I was able to help texters, whether by
validating their feelings, connecting
them to resources or talking them
out of committing suicide, I felt
fulfilled. I was able to apply what I
learned from psychology to make
a difference in people’s lives. This
feeling, I realized, was what I wanted
to experience in everything I did.
I finally understood what my dad
meant when he told me to follow
what I love doing. Since most of my
supervisors were licensed social
workers, social work seemed to be
most in line with what I was doing
at Crisis Text Line. I decided to
pursue it. In fact, I will be starting
school next fall at the University of
Michigan once again, only this time
at the School of Social Work.
Looking back now, I’m glad
everything worked out just fine.
Of course, there are still many
unknowns
in
the
future.
For
example, I’m not entirely sure what
I will do after getting my master’s
degree. However, I’m beginning to
think maybe that’s the point of life:
you have to live it to find out. Armed
with this realization, I’m finally
ready to face the future with a less
anxious heart.
MiC Columnist Tian Yeung can be
reached at tiyeung@umich.edu.
Sparks
ROSHNI MOHAN
MiC Columnist
Coldplay’s “Sparks” first came
out in 2000 with their debut studio
album, Parachutes. I was extremely
late to join in on the song’s acclaim.
For years before, I had heard the
song only in passing — a couple of
times from my mother’s car radio,
a dozen times through my Spotify
recommendation
playlists
and
maybe once or twice from a friend.
But even though I had heard the
song enough times for it to make a
lasting impression, it never did. I
never actually listened to the song
like I would normally. I simply tuned
out the music and ignored the lyrics
for no particular reason instead of
paying attention to the emotions
it drew from me. The song went in
through my left ear and out through
the right. Every time I heard it, it rang
a bell somewhere deep in the folds of
my brain, but not loud enough for me
to actually pay attention or even look
at the song name or the artist.
But sitting at lunch that day
studying for a quiz with only my left
earbud in so I could hear my friends
talking changed things. For some
reason that I don’t understand, at a
time when it made the most sense
to let the song flow in one ear and
out the other, the song stuck. It
melted, sticking to every structure
in my brain, pooling into every
space, filling every fold. The first
eight seconds, while beautiful and
attention-grabbing, were nothing
compared to what followed. It was a
buildup to the rest of the song, a calm
before the storm.
The song feels calming at first,
like something you’d feel when
closing your laptop after finishing a
long assignment, sitting with your
friends at night on the beach, on
the car ride home after an exciting
day or lying in bed after a date that
went well and replaying the night in
your head. It’s a song where, at first,
the melody glues a gentle smile on
your face, but just 10 seconds later,
the lyrics rip it off as slowly as they
can, prolonging the pain you feel
as you begin to feel your smile pull
tightly at your skin. It’s a song that
is more deeply filled with immense
regret and longing. One filled with
internal sadness and desperation.
The lyrics focus on the character of
the song dealing with his partner
leaving him and emphasize how hurt
he is knowing he hurt his partner,
pushing her away until she had no
choice but to leave.
“Sparks” has quickly become one
of my favorite songs, a normally hard
thing for me to state with conviction
given my indecisiveness. I can’t help
but call it a favorite because it’s a song
with so few lyrics, yet it still says so
much. It’s a song that inflicts deep
sadness and pain onto its listeners,
but in the best way possible, allowing
them to feel all the pent-up emotions
they haven’t allowed themselves to
feel yet. It has become a song that
I have overplayed countless times,
yet one that has never ceased to get
old to me. And knowing the deep
sadness in the song sends me into a
running stream of tears every time
I hear those heart-breaking eight
seconds — the eight seconds I called
calming that day at the lunch table.
The more I listen to it, the more I
realize how much I actually resonate
with it recently, as I relate to the
character in the song, but also the
one he sings about. The lyrics “But I
won’t let you down / Oh yeah I will,
yeah I will, yes I will” point out both
of our destructive qualities. He let his
partner down by hurting her, in the
same way I self-sabotage the good
things in my life and hurt the people
around me. He can’t promise that he
won’t disappoint her when he knows
he will and always does. And on the
other hand, his partner has no choice
but to leave. She finally prioritizes
herself after a relationship that
existed to focus solely on what he
wanted.
Read more at michigandaily.com
ROSHNI MOHAN/MiC
AMY DENG/MiC