Sometimes as I go through college, I feel as though everything around me is trying to limit me. I have to make choices that constantly seem to be limiting my range of interests. People are constantly being asked to specify their passions, to try to narrow it down to a single focus. But the truth is that people are not defined by a single passion.

People cannot simply fit into one box – to use an obvious cliché. Before I came to college, I had already limited my passions for various reasons – I had stopped playing hockey even though I loved skating to focus on high school speech and I had stopped dancing with my friends in my troupe because I could no longer afford to pay for the fees involved which my parents weren’t willing to pay for it for me. I had decided very early on that math and science were not my thing. I had shied away from the shop classes and the child development classes – convinced I couldn’t possibly be interested in those subjects. But most of these things I discontinued were minor passions of mine, or unrealized passions that I never actually gave a chance.

When I got to college, though, things were different. I had to start making choices that would cut out major passions. I had played in the orchestra at my high school for many years, and I had even talked to a professor here about being a part of orchestra when I was applying, but I made the choice to give that up; a choice that I kind of regret. I consoled myself with the fact that I hadn’t cut out music entirely – I was still taking voice lessons and participating in orchestra – but I was still very sad to give up the viola. In college, you are surrounded by the message that you need to “find yourself” and find the one thing you really want to do – above everything else.

The one thing you could do as an occupation that would make you happy. Unfortunately, I don’t think that people come with a single desire – or a focus so singular as to hang on to one subject for the entirety of their lives. We are eclectic creatures and each of us has a myriad of interests, passions, and hobbies.

You as a person are both transient and permanent. For you are always yourself, but you are never the same. 

Recently, I’ve been noticing lore and more often the passions I’ve left behind or the passions I’ve not discovered, yet again creeping into my life and I have decided that it’s a good thing. I have made the conscious decision not to limit myself. I believe that if you like something, you should do it and find a way to work it into your life.

I’m majoring in theatre and focusing on performance, but this year I have discovered that I also enjoy some of the aspects of stage management. I like to sing and make music, I like to dance and to paint, and I don’t believe that I should be forced to choose between these things. And even beyond the artistic (because I’m sure not everyone reading this considers themselves artistic), there is no need to limit yourself to a single discipline all the time. No need to limit your likes and dislikes or to ever feel ashamed of the things that you enjoy.

People try to limit you to the person you have always been. They think that you will continue to think as you have always thought, intractable and immovable, stuck in the rut of who you have always been. The thing is, change is possible and necessary. We do not live in a void and we are constantly influenced and changed by the ebb and flow of the tide around us. Our modern world, with its global communication and sense of progress cannot forever remain the same. You must realize that change is inevitable and recognize that changing and growing, losing some passions and gaining others, is normal and necessary. You as a person are not a single thing day in and day out, forever and always. That is an impossible state of being. You as a person are both transient and permanent. For you are always yourself, but you are never the same.

-Andrea Broman