Not all dreams are screens and smoke
Corinne Dyer
Issue date: 5/6/09 Section: Opinion
I used to believe that you really could achieve your dreams. You know, when I was seven. Maybe I believed longer than that, but that's when the clouds started moving in.
It helps to have a brutally honest mother. I told her I really, really wanted to be an archaeologist. She said, "No." She said it was hard and dirty and that I would work a lifetime for practically no results. I should do something easier, like anthropology. I believed her. (She also told my sister she would never be a professional ballerina - when she was about eight.)
Other dreams have come and taken their place in my castle in the clouds, where I go sometimes to admire them and play with them. Become a famous musician. Write a best-selling novel. Become a poet lauded alongside Tennyson and Poe. Be a pilot. Write for Smithsonian magazine. Be Indiana Jones (the female version). Go to Oxford. Marry a Scottish cellist player who also plays Rachmaninoff on the piano, likes to read poetry and owns a castle in the Scottish highlands.
College, however, is the land of reality. You have to have a major. You have to have career goals. You're just two steps away from a job, the real kind that requires skill, not the summer job at the local deli earning minimum wage.
Therefore, you have to learn as much as you possibly can, preferably focused in one direction, in four years - because you really need that job to pay off student loans, and you can't afford more than four years of student loans before you get a real job.
College could be regarded as the real dream-killer, actually, rather than my mom. Provided you get into the school you want, and provided you can pay for it, your self-esteem gets systematically kicked by hard classes and bad grades. I admit, as much as I pretend not to care about grades, at heart I'm still the A-grubbing nerd I was in middle school.
Some people treat college quite practically, majoring in business and pharmacy and other things that will get them solid jobs and comfortable paychecks. Good for them. Unfortunately for me, my happiness rarely lies in the practical. I don't expect to be Indiana Jones when I graduate, although I think that would be pretty darn awesome. But, I'm here, making baskets, with no realistic career goals whatsoever, so...
Let's let everything else fall to the ground and let's shoot for the stars, shall we? I've got a few tricks up my sleeve, a few ideas for making dreams come true.
Because, as it turns out, not all dreams are screens and smoke. After all, somebody has to be the astronauts, the firemen, the rock stars and the archaeologists. These kinds of jobs don't just fill themselves, do they?
Corinne Dyer is a sophomore history major from Gainesville, Ga. She can be reached at
cedyer@samford.edu.
It helps to have a brutally honest mother. I told her I really, really wanted to be an archaeologist. She said, "No." She said it was hard and dirty and that I would work a lifetime for practically no results. I should do something easier, like anthropology. I believed her. (She also told my sister she would never be a professional ballerina - when she was about eight.)
Other dreams have come and taken their place in my castle in the clouds, where I go sometimes to admire them and play with them. Become a famous musician. Write a best-selling novel. Become a poet lauded alongside Tennyson and Poe. Be a pilot. Write for Smithsonian magazine. Be Indiana Jones (the female version). Go to Oxford. Marry a Scottish cellist player who also plays Rachmaninoff on the piano, likes to read poetry and owns a castle in the Scottish highlands.
College, however, is the land of reality. You have to have a major. You have to have career goals. You're just two steps away from a job, the real kind that requires skill, not the summer job at the local deli earning minimum wage.
Therefore, you have to learn as much as you possibly can, preferably focused in one direction, in four years - because you really need that job to pay off student loans, and you can't afford more than four years of student loans before you get a real job.
College could be regarded as the real dream-killer, actually, rather than my mom. Provided you get into the school you want, and provided you can pay for it, your self-esteem gets systematically kicked by hard classes and bad grades. I admit, as much as I pretend not to care about grades, at heart I'm still the A-grubbing nerd I was in middle school.
Some people treat college quite practically, majoring in business and pharmacy and other things that will get them solid jobs and comfortable paychecks. Good for them. Unfortunately for me, my happiness rarely lies in the practical. I don't expect to be Indiana Jones when I graduate, although I think that would be pretty darn awesome. But, I'm here, making baskets, with no realistic career goals whatsoever, so...
Let's let everything else fall to the ground and let's shoot for the stars, shall we? I've got a few tricks up my sleeve, a few ideas for making dreams come true.
Because, as it turns out, not all dreams are screens and smoke. After all, somebody has to be the astronauts, the firemen, the rock stars and the archaeologists. These kinds of jobs don't just fill themselves, do they?
Corinne Dyer is a sophomore history major from Gainesville, Ga. She can be reached at
cedyer@samford.edu.
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