Mark Edmundson on the importance of following your passions

“Constantly I see my students leaving the university, determined to do not what they want and need to do, but what their parents and their friends believe that they ought to do. And in this they can in some measure succeed. Society has a great span of resources to assist someone in doing what he’s not cut out for yet still must be done. Alcohol, drugs, divorce, and buying, buying, buying what you don’t need will all help you jam your round peg of a self into this or that square-holed profession. * But those students who, through whatever form of struggle, really have come to an independent sense of who they are and what they want genuinely seem to thrive in the world. Thoreau says that if you advance in the direction of your dreams, you’ll find uncommon success, and teaching a few generations of students has persuaded me that he is right. The ones who do what they love without a lot of regard for conventional success tend to turn out happy and strong. As to those willing to advance in the direction of other people’s dreams — well, prime the credit cards, crank the porn channel!”
–Mark Edmundson, “Dwelling in Possibilities,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 14, 2008