The Rocky Twenties: StFX Professors Share How They Navigated Their Fears for The Future
/On a chilly Saturday evening I lay in my mother’s bed, surrounded by sleeping cats and a pile of tissues, crying about my future. When I turned twenty, it seemed like everything I thought I knew about myself, my goals and what I wanted to do with my life, had simply vanished. My mother listened as I poured out my worries with my tears. How am I supposed to take steps towards my future when I haven’t got the faintest clue what I want it to look like? How do I navigate these feelings of being lost? Everyone tells you your twenties are some of the best but most challenging years of your life, and that these are the years to discover who you are. But how do I deal with the immense fear?
Many other students in their twenties feel this fear. As a child, we are taught to dream about our adult life and “what we want to be when we grow up”. Exploring the possibilities for our future and changing our minds was normal and expected of us. Yet, after post-secondary education, the pressure to find a good job, settle down, and begin a new chapter weighs heavily on many graduates. The imagination and the search for self we’ve nurtured since childhood are pushed aside to make room for one’s career trajectory.
This pressure can often make students feel isolated from their peers, especially when some are dragging their feet toward their future while others are taking it in stride. Yet StFX’s own professors have experienced these same rocky years, some in rather unconventional ways. “When I started university, I thought I wanted to be a physiotherapist,” confesses Angie Kolen, Professor of Human Kinetics. “I was interviewed [for physiotherapy school] and didn’t get in.” Then, she discovered physical education (the equivalent of StFX’s Human Kinetics) and loved it. “But I did not really know what I was going to do.” The fourth year came around, and nothing had changed. “I discovered I was pregnant in the final term of my fourth year. Here is where my career takes an interesting twist,” Professor Kolen recounts. She was asked to teach a university class as a sessional instructor for students wanting to teach physical education to elementary school children. “I dabbled in that for four years before going back to school. Four years mature, two babies later, I was twenty-five years old when I went back to school, and I loved it. It wasn’t until my master’s degree that I realized I wanted to be a professor”.
For Assistant Professor of Management Mark MacIsaac, there was no hard plan after graduation. “I had a general sense of what I wanted to do, and even that wasn’t very well formed,” Professor MacIsaac recalls. “I went into business because I thought I wanted to work in business, and that was only due to what I saw growing up – my father, putting on a suit, going into downtown Halifax, into an office building and working”. When graduation rolled around, he had yet to develop a specific plan. “I wasn’t really intentional or deliberate about what my career would be. By the time I got to graduation, it was kind of scary. Because I was uncertain, one of my professors recommended I go do my masters in England, which I did.” This led to the beginning of a career in business. Yet Professor MacIsaac learned that his expectations outgrew his reality. “It wasn’t really right for me. It was only when I started to teach at part-time teaching gigs that I realized, wow, this is something I really enjoy”.
“I didn’t graduate high school,” says Associate Professor of History Chris Frazer. “I had a very different experience; I didn’t go to university until I was 30.” Professor Frazer spent his twenties working, traveling, and going to community college with the hopes of transferring to a university. He also met his partner, and they had a child together. “When I started university, I was a dad, working and being a full-time student. I didn’t get my university degree until after having a child”. Professor Frazer's twenties coincided with a tumultuous state of the world; the imminent threat of nuclear warfare and the height of the AIDS crisis were events that majorly shaped his worldview and political organizing. Amidst this crisis was an extremely hostile climate towards the LGBTQ+ community. “I had to watch many friends die of AIDS. That left me wondering, am I ever going to be able to grow up and be myself completely?”
Each of these professors had to navigate many fears during this period of their lives. “I wondered, is it me? Am I never going to get a job?” recounts Professor MacIsaac. Coming out of a master’s program in a time of recession added another layer of difficulty. “It took probably 6-8 months before I landed what I characterized as a ‘“real job,” and that was uncomfortable.” But he kept trying, and, in the end, it worked out.
For Professor Kolen, her twenties were vastly different than many of her peers. “My twenties were not like my friends’ twenties: I was a young mom, fraught with a lot of self-esteem issues,” she remembers. She experienced many doubts about being good enough during her days as a sessional instructor. “I often wondered, was I going to amount to anything? I think being a mom is so important, but sometimes it felt like it wasn’t enough. Was my life going to be worthwhile?” When she went back to school, however, she found it an amazingly challenging experience and built her confidence back.
It’s easy to forget our professors were in their early twenties at one point, and they have learned incredibly important life lessons. For Professor Frazer, the most important thing he wishes to impart to his students is the importance of exploration. “Have experiences, go out and learn about the world,” he says. “I’m not unhappy with how late I made it to university. There is nothing wrong with taking your time, and there is no actual formula. It’s about discovering who you are, what you want, and finding like-minded people.” Professor MacIsaac reiterates this statement. “Uncertainty is a part of life. There’s a certain component of uncertainty that we all need to get comfortable with.” He highlights the importance of trust. “Trust the process. Don’t think that you need to have it all planned out. Things tend to make sense much more retrospectively than they do prospectively.” For Professor Kolen, she wants her students to take chances. “Don’t rush into another program just because you don’t know what to do other than school. Take a step back, and if you can, travel. Be brave and experience life and learn more about yourself”.
The twenties can be a time of fear, doubt, and many worries. Yet, they can also be a time for exploration and provide opportunities one can only dream of. Many of the successful adults around us have had to navigate their way through these same suffocating feelings. But what they all have in common is that they took risks and trusted that it would all work out. Like Professor Kolen says: “Dare to go through a door or window that you’re not sure is the right opportunity for you”.
Because at the end of the day, you have to try something to know if it’s right for you, even if it scares you. You can be scared and try anyways.