Last-minute ambition

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I thought the answer to that question would be straightforward, as easy as my name, my birthday, or my age. I thought I would be like those people who wake up one morning and realize exactly what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Instead, I dithered and waffled and jumped from one ambition to another, crossing them off a mental checklist. I never had that burst of inspiration, that sudden jolt of purpose setting my life compass.

When I was younger, I didn’t have dreams of becoming a lawyer. Entering law school was a snap decision made on the brink of college graduation.

I used to have an idea—or rather, several ideas—of what I wanted to be when I grew up. In preschool, I wanted to be a housewife. I liked pretending to cook on the child-sized kitchen set handed down to me by my older cousins, making table settings for my stuffed animals, and even ironing doll clothes with a pretend iron and a small pink ironing board. You could give me a few plastic pots and pans and fake food, and I could be occupied the entire afternoon. I would even make up recipes on the spot that made no sense to anyone except myself.

That ambition changed. After understanding the kind of company my father worked for, I declared proudly that I would work for the rival company because he was already in the other. At that young age, was I capable of planning for our family to dominate that particular industry? Probably not.

That was the beginning of my childhood spent shuttling from one dream to another, never 100-percent sure of what I wanted to do with my life. I drew comics that were blatant ripoffs of the Sunday strips. I went so far as to “write” my own newspaper, which was sheets of paper stapled together and full of crayon drawings and pencil scrawls. My characters were bland and uninteresting, my imagination left a lot to be desired, and my writing was exactly what you would expect from a Kinder 2 student.

By the time I entered grade school, I had stopped wanting to be a housewife, an employee at a company like my father’s, an artist, or a journalist. I decided to become an astronomer, going so far as to make another stapled paper book, this time about the solar system. I devoured the encyclopedias I got for my birthdays and said I’d be a scientist. I gathered broken toys and strange odds and ends in my bedroom and stared at them, thinking of something I could invent. (I didn’t come up with anything.)

My science phase lasted until, in the fourth grade, I decided I’d be president of the Philippines. My ambition was fueled more by personal pride and the drive to lead, but it was there—until I learned that presidents could be impeached.

I downgraded that ambition to becoming a senator. I highly doubt that I understood back then that it is the Senate that tries and decides cases of impeachment. But I did understand enough to know that a senator is also in a position to lead and serve the country. I don’t recall what dissuaded me from chasing this dream; perhaps it was the idea of having to write laws, or having to campaign and win votes, or both.

In high school, I felt like I was running out of options. I would say that I wanted to be a neurologist or a psychologist when I was asked, but there was always a part of me that wasn’t certain, let alone passionate. I rediscovered the joy of writing, wrote novels that sat in the deepest recesses of my hard drive, and took an active part in our campus paper. But I couldn’t imagine myself writing for a living. As for science, I still dabbled in it, but it had gotten harder and more frustrating for me to actually learn the principles of physics, or tame my nemesis, aka stoichiometry. Government service was half on and half off the table. I didn’t even bother learning to cook beyond home economics class.

As I hurtled toward college and the inevitable entrance exams, I pored over the list of available degree majors, mentally ruling out those I knew I wasn’t interested in, but still winding up with more than I could choose from each university. I finally settled on psychology, choosing it whenever it was available at the universities I applied to, knowing it would open many fields for me when I graduated. I put off deciding on my career path and focused on surviving college. I thought four years would give me enough time to think about my career.

I was wrong.

I ruled out medicine, among other things, in my second year, leaving me with two paths that, even weighed with their own pros and cons, seemed evenly balanced in my mind’s eye—law school and a master’s degree. I thought that at this point, it would be easy to choose between only two paths.

I was also wrong about that.

I liked both of them this time; no wonder they were on equal footing. It was no longer a matter of leafing through possible careers, junking those I knew I didn’t want and moving on to the next batch. For the time being, at the very least, I had to stick to one.

The clock was ticking. The countdown to graduation had begun. Closer than that was the law aptitude exam at the University of the Philippines Diliman, so I left my fate in the test results. If I passed, I would go to law school. If I didn’t, then I would continue my psychology studies. When I took the test, I wanted to pass and at the same time thought I had nothing to lose if I failed. In fact, I went on with my life as if I hadn’t taken the test at all, until people started chattering excitedly online about the results coming out. Maybe, during the interim, I took the time to breathe instead of frantically trying to decide once and for all what I would do after earning my bachelor’s degree.

Four years ago I passed the law aptitude exam, and that set my feet onto the path to becoming a lawyer. Yet, all those previous years of indecision were not wasted.

Everything I wanted to do as a child still contributed greatly to who I am now. My imagination has become wilder than it was when I was in preschool. I still write, and watch nature and science shows on TV in my spare time. Perhaps, wanting to be part of the government contributed to my staying in law school—although I no longer aspire for those higher positions. I fell in love with psychology, but that love was not strong enough for me to work toward a doctorate, in the same way that my love for writing was not strong enough to propel me toward a career in it.

Not everyone wakes up one morning with a sense of certainty about what they want to be, or to do. Everyone’s road and destination are different. They say that the road is just as significant, if not more so, than the destination, but it’s equally true that no matter what shape one’s journey takes, and no matter how it starts, they’ll get there.

Now that I’ve grown up, I cherish every step, every turn, and every stride of the journey I’ve taken to get here.

Ma. Katrina Lucas, 26, is a fifth-year law student at the University of the Philippines Diliman.