Having successfully “adulted” for about half a year now, I’ve come to the realization that I’m actually terrible at prioritizing my time and getting things done outside the bare necessities. I attribute this to a lack of long-term planning and goal-setting. Most of my day-to-day tasks are written in a to-do list and completed without trouble, but goals for a week or a month away are commonly pushed aside as these daily goals arise.

Overall, my work life balance is not bad, if you consider most of what I do is either work or play games with friends. My life really hasn’t had much else in it yet. There are bits and pieces of hobbies like playing frisbee, violin, dance, and reading, but I don’t think I’ve dedicated enough time to any of them to be able to properly call any of them a hobby.

Thus, my goal this year is to actually dedicate some time to doing the things I want to do instead of randomly deciding to do things last minute. And I guess this post will serve as a list of these goals that I can go back and check through as I hit everything. Sort of a 2020 bucket list.

Stuff I want to do this year:

• Read a book every week
• Learn a dance once a week
• Go on a vacation trip (out of state) with friends
• Ask a love interest out
• Learn the basics of Korean
• Maintain a clean workspace by cleaning once a week
• Learn to ice skate properly
• Keep up with friends by checking in often
• Be a good person

These goals seem pretty achievable to me so I’ll be updating this post as I make progress throughout the year.

The last two goals are the most important. It’s pretty common nowadays to see memes online (especially in certain Facebook groups) about being depressed, stressed, or even suicidal.

Mental health is as important as physical well-being, but it’s often not treated anywhere near as seriously. With the influence of social media greater than ever, people share their personal struggles to larger and larger audiences. I believe humorous memes act as a great medium to open up about personal issues and find solidarity among others in similar situations around the globe, but constantly joking about wanting to die can be detrimental, normalizing something that very much shouldn’t be normal. I often used the phrase “guess I’ll die” nonchalantly during my college years, and I now realize I was part of the problem.

I guess it’s a balance of sorts; the availability of information serves to spread awareness and improve access to care while the internet itself dissociates mental illness from its seriousness and severity. It’s easy to become desensitized to ideas that should be pretty concerning when you scroll past hundreds of posts a day, many of which involve dying in some way or being depressed. There are dedicated wholesome meme forums: Facebook pages, subreddits, even group chats, that serve to bring more positivity to the internet, but that’s not a great substitute for support from a medical professional.

I’ve had multiple friends who have suffered through depression and/or suicidal thoughts; some overcame it, others lost the fight, and more are still fighting. Each person is unique in their experience and things that help one individual may not help another. Ultimately, my goal is to be there to support, as much as I can, for anyone who may need help. And to all my friends who have been there for me during college and beyond, thank you.

There’s a figure of speech, “jack of all trades”, used often as a compliment to refer to a person with a wide variety of skills or broad range of knowledge. The occasionally added second part, “master of none”, turns the compliment into a more unflattering phrase by implying the lack of depth of each skill.

The full phrase seems to be an accurate depiction of my life so far. In almost every aspect, this figure of speech applies appropriately.

Take for instance, sports. My physical ability is pretty well-rounded. I can run and swim, sprints and long distance. I can play badminton, frisbee, football, tennis, volleyball. I’m decent at all of these, but there isn’t a single one that I’m exceptionally good at. Maybe I just need more practice. Almost every day I’ll join my friends in playing various sports, but despite all the time I spend playing, I don’t feel like my skills are improving. I might not be practicing properly. Any sort of professional spends hours day after day playing the same sport to hone their skills. I tend to switch it up to join different friend groups in playing different sports. There’s just not enough time in a day to do everything I want to do.

Music; another example. I’ve played violin since I was two and a half, spending an hour every day practicing, year after year, eventually joining orchestra in middle school and high school. Despite having played the longest, I was never first chair; always second, or third, or fourth. I made All-State my freshman year in high school, and every other year I was less than 10 ranks away from making it again. I’ve never won a concerto competition, but I can play by ear, read alto and bass clef, and improvise on the violin. So although I don’t have the most pleasing tone, the perfect intonation, or the best technique, I do have a wide variety of relevant skills that make playing violin a little more fun, and that’s enough for me.

Even my major, biomedical engineering, is sort of an amalgam of other majors. The degree plan itself is a mess, borrowing classes from other majors including biology, chemistry, and electrical and computer engineering. As such, BME is commonly seen as a combination of these majors. While this seems like you’d get a broad education with it, the opposite is actually true. In this situation, BME attempts to combine aspects of too many majors and ends up spreading itself too thin. I know the basics of each of these majors, but my understanding of their higher-level concepts is near nonexistent. The narrow niche that BME occupies is painfully evident when attending career fairs.

UT’s semesterly engineering EXPO is supposed to be one of the largest career fairs hosted by UT, with over 300 companies attending the Fall 2018 EXPO. Filtering this list online by “majors recruited” results in 27 remaining that were seeking BME majors. Over half of these were companies that weren’t necessarily relevant in the biomedical field, but simply recruited all engineering majors. This left about ten companies recruiting BME students that had work pertaining to the biomedical field. In contrast, filtering for any other engineering major would provide a list of at least 50 companies seeking those students. I didn’t even bother attending EXPO this past fall.

I thought perhaps I might have more luck at the natural science career fair, but most recruiters there simply suggested I check out the engineering fair. Clearly, BME does not qualify you for jobs requiring a biology, CS, or EE degree. Of course, part of this might just be the nature of BME as a relatively new field, and perhaps in 20 years there will be many more companies looking for BME majors. It just doesn’t help when even your major is an example of this “jack of all trades, master of none” concept.

At this point, I’ve come to terms with it. I read somewhere about a longer version: “jack of all trades, master of none, but often times better than master of one”, and I guess that’s true in the grand scheme of things. Being exceptional at something usually requires hours and hours of committment to get there, and while it would be nice to be the best at something, I have yet to find something worth sacrificing the time and opportunity to pursue all my other passions. It’s hard to rationalize being decent at everything but not amazing at anything, but I think I’m comfortable with being a “jack of all trades, master of none”. For me personally, the versatility of being competent across a broad range of skills outweighs having mastery over strictly a single skill. After all, pocket jacks might be tough to play, but it’s still objectively better than starting ace-king.