Well… it’s thirteen days into the new year, and I’ve already blown all of my money. 

Actually, not really. I still have plenty of cash saved up that I don’t plan on touching anytime soon, and several Michael’s and Cabela’s gift cards to spend (but right now, I don't need anything so I'm saving them). But, I did spend all of my Amazon gift cards on one single item: my very own TI-84 calculator. 

Why on God’s green earth would I spend an outrageous $115 of my own damn money on a brand new TI-84 calculator (which I don’t think has changed since it was invented in the 80s), instead of making my dad pay for it since he agreed to pay all of my college expenses? Because, when I buy something, especially something north of $50 bucks, I’m much more likely to feel driven to use that something. And when I feel like I need to use something, I’m more likely to seek things out that require me to use that thing. 

In other words, I bought my own damn TI-84 calculator to further incentivize myself to take on increasingly difficult math and sciences classes, especially since I really haven’t enjoyed the majority of my liberal arts courses. That, and I'm going to college ultimately to get into a much more lucrative career. And the vast majority of the most lucrative careers out there require one to understand higher level math and science. 

Sure, writing is important and art is fun to make, but both fields are highly competitive and ridiculously oversaturated. I certainly don’t think it’s worth it to get a degree in writing or art unless I have a very specific job in mind that requires such degrees. Plus, I don’t want to turn something I genuinely enjoy doing on my free time into something I have to rely on to meet my financial needs. Sure, if my art and writing do take off and become a massive source of passive income for me, then that’s cool. I’ll feel comfortable relying (or basically retiring) on that. But I’m not willing to live paycheck-to-paycheck off of something as financially unreliable as writing and art often are. 

That said, I’m very aware of the fact that not every career in STEM automatically guarantees financial stability (or stability in general). I’m no longer pursuing a career in Computer Science or software tech in general, because of the fact that A) those jobs are severely oversaturated, and B) many of those jobs will probably be replaced by AI in the next five years, if not much sooner. I also don’t think pursuing a job in the healthcare industry is the greatest idea (unless it’s something entirely behind the scenes, such as building MRI machines or something like that), even though medical science has been progressing at an exponential rate and I’m probably gonna live a very long, healthy life. Aside from that, I’m not sure what else I don’t want to do. The possibilities and opportunities remain overwhelmingly endless.