The Existential Doubts on Future

By N. Alice Yamada

Chief-Of-Staff

ife is a strange thing. It's always an upward climb. I feel like I'm always trying to reach some goal, telling myself that after this, I will be able to relax. I'm starting to realize that it's all a farce - I mean the relaxaztion. There is no place where I can relax in this society. I guess I am having an existential crisis, but life itself just seems like a rat race that gets me nowhere.
Friedrich Nietzsche, the father of modern Existential Doubt.
First of all, I told myself in high school that once I get into college, I would never have to deal with competition, standarized tests, or any sort of "qualification test" of that sort. Boy, I was wrong. As junior in the biochemical field, I am faced with the competition to get into summer research opportunities, GREs, and building an impressive resume, good enough to make myself marketable to the graduate schools. Right now, to get through each day, I tell myself that once I get into graduate school, I will not have to worry about another qualification test again. BUT the truth is that I will never be able to escape from the competition. After grad school comes the horrifying "hiring qualification test." Unless I get hired somewhere as a professor, I'm screwed. So I need to publish my research work as a grad student and somehow impress my future employers during my grad school years.
After I get a job as a professor, tenureship testing starts. I must WORK to be an impressive teacher as well as a researcher to secure my job. If I fail here, all my skills and abilities will go down the drain. It doesn't matter how good of a grad student I was if I get rejected for tenureship. I must leave the college, wherever I am working at the time, and find a new place to start again - the impressing process. Oh, boy, what a mess. Now let's say I luckily got the tenureship. I am next in competition for some higher position in the ladder of professorship! Ahh- get me out of this cycle!!
What a life to look forward to living. I guess I just need to satisfy myself with what I have, and strive no further than where I am. But in modern day society, is that at all possible? Would I not end up being left behind in the backyard of Nowhere? What else can I do, other than try to reach the highest position (if there is one) where I can relax and be safe in my haven? When will I reach such a state? Oh, the existentialist in me says to give up trying to please society and leave the cycle. Yet, the realist in me says to try a little harder, just another day, just another year. It seems like peace will not be found anytime soon. Or does life have one of those cheesy romance endings with "what I had been looking for was always in my hands?" I guess I will only know 60 years later on my death bed.