Turning Your Passion into a Profession

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

by Natasha Overin

The wise Confucius once said, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Contrary to Confucius's good intentions, choosing a job you love, and attending a university to achieve it, can be quite a bit of work.

Bunkered down in the university library, barricaded by stacks of textbooks, planner overflowing, with internship deadlines to fulfill and student organization meetings to attend, college can oftentimes feel like an uphill battle.

Even the most studious college students gaze at their endless to-do lists, oftentimes working for free to gain ‘experience’ while surviving on a college budget, wondering is it all worth it.

Now, as a current college student myself, I can’t provide a concrete answer quite yet. For now, all I can provide is a relatively self-assured “yes”, backed by statistics that, unless you, dear reader, are the next Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, having a college degree will certainly help you get ahead.

The sobering reality is, no matter where we find ourselves in life, there will always be times where we are overwhelmed. Whether this be meeting college deadlines, working as a young professional, securing a promotion, making a career change, raising a family or achieving personal goals.

Looking at Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and other successful professionals, the traits which set them apart were not an absence of rejection, hardship or failure. The factor which set them apart was their passion. All of these professionals believed in their ideas so strongly that they pursued them despite adversity.

This is why we must follow our passions, discovering the parts of life which bring us happiness. The activities, subjects, hobbies or any amalgam of factors which garner our curiosity and compel us to get up each morning.

Many of our readers are public relations students like myself. Perhaps your passion is communication, social media, content creation or crisis communication.

Or maybe, like me, your first passion might not have been public relations. (That’s okay too.)
Like many students, perhaps you fell into this major because it involves strategic communication and the media, but with a more stable job growth projection than journalism, or more room for creativity than traditional marketing. Perhaps you chose public relations as your college major because it was the "smart option".

While Confucius’s concept of ‘choosing a job you love and never working another day in your life’, may seem contrived, he does make a valid point.

Throughout my college studies, involvement with PRSSA and navigating the professional world, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and network with public relations professionals in a multitude of industries, including entertainment, sports management, automotive, hospitality, food, medical, music, non-profit, public affairs and a number of other fields.

When college studies or young professional life gets overwhelming, take a deep breath and refocus yourself. Cultivate a career that is rich in fulfillment. There is no guarantee our academic pursuits and careers will be without difficulties. However, by transforming a passion into a profession, we are able to turn the tables on what a meaningful career looks like.

In doing so, we can gauge success not just by a paycheck, but by the differences we make as professionals in industries we truly care about.

What is your passion, and how can you turn it into a profession?