“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

This simple question has haunted me since the first time it was asked. Even at age 20, I still hear it. Rather than an innocent musing, it’s a question of my reality in exactly one year’s time.

This question indirectly suggests that you should know what you want. When you’re young, how could you possibly know? Most kids say jobs like “firefighter,” “astronaut,” “veterinarian,” or “archaeologist.” When they say “firefighter,” they really mean “thrill of danger,” and when they say “archaeologist,” they really mean “Indiana Jones.” Sometimes, you get kids that are a little odd, who say “a mermaid,” which then forces you to explain that Susie, you cannot be a mermaid because mermaids don’t exist. And even if they did, the transition would be a long and painful process.

When you expect children to know what they want to do or to be, this hinders their exploration later in life. In high school, they might decide they want to be an engineer, or on their first day of college, they might declare pre-med. While I do find myself envious of those who know – who have “always known” – exactly what they want, I also find those people incredibly suspect. How do they know what they want? Have they ever played with the possibility of doing something else? Do they even have experience doing what they claim they want to do? What if – by the time they realize they hate it – it’s too late?

Anyway, the “what do you want to be” question really comes back to bite you. First, it comes when you’re applying to colleges and asked to arbitrarily select a 1st, 2nd, and quite possibly a 3rd choice major. Then, it strikes again when you’re in college and you actually have to declare that major. What’s more, if you’re anything like me, declaring a major doesn’t just put the question to rest – no. Every day for the rest of your college life, you will contemplate whether or not you picked the right major, change it a few times, and eventually give up entirely because you just want to graduate on time and there’s always grad school.

I wish, desperately, that instead of asking students what they want to be, people would ask us what subjects we enjoy, which ones we don’t, or what projects have been our favorites. In an alternate, utopian society, college majors would not exist (some schools already do this, but it’s far from conventional). We would take classes in the subjects that interest us, and at graduation, our “major” and “minor” would be the subjects in which we took the most and second-most classes. Wouldn’t that be fun, like liberal arts on steroids? If so many people insist that “your college major doesn’t really matter,” why does it seem like it really does?

The question of “what do you want to be” insinuates that children can only choose one future, one outcome for their life. It’s unlikely that anyone’s explained what a second career is. It’s like telling someone, “you have one chance to choose what the rest of your life looks like, so make it count!” As a kid, this didn’t stress me out, but now it really, really does. Like, what if I choose wrong?

Finally, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” normalizes the notion that a person is or should be defined by their college major, job, or career—that a person’s life can’t hold value otherwise. This, I’ve found, is especially true in Western cultures and even more true in the US, where we’re so caught up in capitalism that we fail to achieve a reasonable work-life balance. (All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, right?) As morose as it sounds, we all die one day. When I look back on my time and what I did with it, I’d hate to regret selling out.

So yeah, I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, and I doubt I’ll ever figure it out. Instead, I’ll take opportunities as they come, focus on the things I enjoy, and hopefully, make an income while doing so. I know what I like and what I don’t, and I have a vague sense of my skill set. The next time someone asks me, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I’ll answer with “a mermaid; next question?”

This article was brought to you by a naive 20-year-old who probably doesn’t know what she’s talking about!