My American Dream: A Career As A Pharmacist

As a junior in high school, the most terrifying question that anyone could ask me is, “What do you want to major in?” Until this year, my mother had never asked me about my future plans. She has a major in microbiology from the University of Georgia, but works in Atlanta in the insurance business as an underwriter. In college, she considered pharmaceutical work, but was told not to by her father who convinced her that all pharmacists were “druggies”. My mother is in the “useless degree” category now, and might use her degree better as a mouse pad than in any actual science field. She often tells my sister and me during our group car rides, “I could’ve made more money as a pharmacist”, obviously regretting her decision of which her parents mostly made. When she turns to me to talk about college, she always saves the question about my major for last; I think
We as Americans are taught our entire lives to work hard and to be persistent, and eventually we will end up where we want to be. Though, when I want to write poetry, that “dream” is unacceptable because it is not engineering, architecture, education, business, or technology related. People ask me what I am going to do with that degree; in my opinion, it is obvious: write. I know that is not what they mean. They actually mean that it is not sustainable, so I automatically will need an “actual job”. The American Dream itself is a multitude of things, from the “pursuit of material prosperity” (QUOTE) to “living a simple, fulfilling life” (QUOTE). “Success” itself is subjective; if I do not make the average amount of money in the middle working class but I am happy, that is my idea of success. I cannot imagine someone lying on their deathbed, recounting their life, and only being able to say, “I made a lot of money in my life”, not “I took a path in life that was not the safest, but I made it out alright and did what I wanted to