December 13, 2021
Editor: Abigail Peacock
Artist: Halley Barger Elliott
Going to a highly regarded school like Michigan, most conversations with friends or family always find their way to discussing the arguably most important part of the future: my career path. Although somewhat stressful as we’re still pretty young - as merely second-years - this has been extremely difficult to navigate after my recent realization that I don’t necessarily want to follow the quote unquote “normal” path that most people will end up doing after their four years at this school.
Since I was in second grade, I remember spending most of my time trying on outfits, prancing around the house, and claiming to my parents that one day I would be a world-famous superstar. And although my desire to dress up and dance around the house has slowly fizzled out, I still have this urge inside of me to become someone with lots of fame who does a career that’s outside of the norm for most college students.
I like to say that this doesn’t necessarily stem from a place of narcissism, as I truly don’t think it does (although, who doesn’t love attention.) But for me, it comes from a place of not knowing exactly where to use my more creative talents in a world where most students feel pressure to do more classic, normative, and high-paying careers after college. I’ve never excelled in the science or math portions of middle or high school, and at Michigan I have found myself drawn to classes in the realms of communications and media, film and video editing, marketing, and more.
This is an abnormal thing to do with my future, and therefore it’s been more difficult for me than my peers on more ‘normal’ career paths to navigate what exactly to do with my future. Especially living with 55 girls in my sorority house where there are many doctors, nurses, and future mathematicians, saying that I want to be an influencer or someone who works in a more creative space feels lesser-than. I find myself continuously making self-deprecating jokes about how I am not as smart as my peers, and about how I’ll definitely not make as much money as those around me in the future.
Yet, it just takes a flip of a switch in one’s mind to realize that we don’t need such a normative job to succeed with our future lives.
According to an article from Media Kik, there are an estimated 3.2 to 37.8 million influencers in the world today. This number is only expanding with the knowledge of this career path and the fact that one can make lots of money for being more creative on platforms that they already use on a day-to-day basis.
Specifically for me, although not an influencer in any sense yet I see myself using my creative talents on my Youtube channel, Instagram, and Tik Tok for my future career. It’s obviously still a dream, but honestly very attainable in our current generation and something I definitely think will come true one day. By using these platforms that I already use every day, and then working with brands to promote their products on these platforms, I can turn something that I use now for creative expression into something that I can use for a career that I have lots of passion for.
I’ve been super invested in many influencers throughout my life, since as I mentioned before, I’ve known I wanted to do this since I was in middle school. Specifically, influencer Eli Rallo - a Michigan alum who is now using her creative talents on her Instagram and Tik Tok platforms to create a self-run career - is someone who I look up to as an inspiration and role model. She has a podcast, line of merch, and other unique benefits that come with being an influencer for a longer period of time.
The idea of using my talents in a similar fashion to Rallo and becoming a vlogger, blogger, and content creator is what keeps me going every day: it’s what drives me through all the classes at school that I think have minimal purpose for this non-normative career path.
If you feel similarly, I challenge you to switch your mindset from being anxious in wanting to do something ‘different’ to feeling confident in being part of a revolution that says we don’t have to do the same thing for work that everyone else may be doing. So, although definitely not there yet, I hope that being an influencer is in my career path - as we are always taught to follow our dreams from the minute we come into this world, and this is definitely my dream.