So You’re Telling Me You Don’t Necessarily Develop Your Life Passions at the Age of 7???

Emily Schultz, Marketing Lead

When I was six years old, I started playing the violin. My elementary school was encouraging students to join the orchestra and my parents thought it would be a great activity for me. Many studies have shown that learning a musical instrument is a fantastic pursuit and helps engage parts of the brain that otherwise are hard to reach. I truly enjoyed playing the instrument for a while; I started private lessons, with the intention of trying to expand and develop my talent. However, somewhere around the age of twelve I completely lost interest in the instrument. I stopped taking private lessons, I stopped practicing, and I reached a plateau in terms of my talent. But, I continued participating in my school’s orchestra until I was seventeen years old, almost five years after I had completely lost interest in the activity. In fact, I used to leave my instrument at the school year-round, I never even took it home to give the illusion of practicing. Now, I bet you are wondering, why did I continue playing the violin? 

It is a very common practice to put children in activities as soon as they can walk, talk, and make a mess. Parents have various reasons for doing this; some are overwhelmed with the prospect of having to entertain their child all day and others recognize that activities can provide enrichment and community that can sometimes last long into adulthood. These activities can be anything from sports teams to art classes to musical instruments and many other facets of life.  All of these are intended to develop interests in a child that will sustain them as they grow. However, sometimes these activities can do just the opposite. As children grow, children’s interests can change due to a variety of factors, and the activities that they were placed in by their parents do not always engage these children once they become teens or young adults. This is exactly what happened to me with the violin..

So, why did I continue this activity that my parents put me in as a child, even as my interests changed due to a variety of factors and I was no longer engaged as a teen/young adult? I continued playing the violin because I thought that if I continued to play, colleges would be impressed by how dedicated I was to the instrument. In addition, I joined my mock trial team, took an exclusive class called Advanced Anatomy that allowed me to dissect cadavers for a full school year, and I was a cheerleader for all four years of high school.  All of these activities required a lot of time. I used to get to school at 7 AM and leave at 8 PM. In one day, I would spend my lunch running through defense arguments, my afternoons dissecting cadavers (which smell BAD), and my evenings cheering on our basketball team. This was absolute madness, a madness that was completely void of passion or interest on my part. Every single extracurricular activity that I joined in high school was either a remnant from my childhood or an attempt to make myself a better applicant for college because someone once told me that having a lot of extracurriculars makes you seem more “well-rounded”. The problem with trying to be “well-rounded” was that I was incredibly busy and overwhelmed, and never had the time or ability to actually develop any of my interests or passions. Although, doing all of the activities did yield good results- I got into the University of California, Berkeley.  

After my high school experience, I promised myself when I entered my freshman year that I would never again continue an activity that I wasn’t interested in. I had always been interested in medicine (which is why I dissected cadavers the entirety of my senior year of high school), mostly because my father, one of my biggest role models, is a physician.  I knew that I wanted to help people and becoming a doctor seemed like the best way to do that. So, I searched for something to spark my interests, and during my spring semester freshman year, I found Afi Health, a non-profit dedicated to helping children learn more about their own health. It has been the absolute perfect activity for me.

The atmosphere of Afi Health was exactly what I needed to learn more about myself and develop interests that I didn’t know I had. The co-founders of the nonprofit, Caroline and Ahaana, allowed all new interns to try every facet of the non-profit, which in turn allowed us to figure out what we genuinely enjoyed doing. Through this process, I discovered an interest in marketing that I never knew existed and the world started to open up to me. I had never been in an environment that was so open to new ideas and my creative side thrived like it never had before. I realized that when given the opportunity to focus on a subject and brainstorm how to solve a problem, I could come up with creative and innovative ideas, along with outlandish and sometimes ridiculous ideas (I will probably always push that we should start producing stuffed animals). Thankfully, all were accepted and seriously considered at Afi Health, which helped me grow more confident in my position and in the environment as a whole.

Afi Health showed me that you can still help people even if you aren’t a doctor and that I have many other utilizable skills. I enjoy working with a team to develop solutions and brainstorm new ideas— pursuits that can be found in many professions. These realizations opened up millions of opportunities for my future, opportunities that I probably would have never considered if not for the Afi Health environment which allowed me to fully and wholeheartedly pursue an interest that was purely my own. I have now switched my major to Economics and am considering professions in medicine, consulting, biotech, and even hospital management! The interests that Afi Health allowed me to develop completely shifted my life path, and I am positive that I will live a more fulfilled life as a result. I believe that as a society we can all make a better effort to encourage each other to focus on developing interests, and also encourage each other to quit activities that may no longer enrich our lives. In this way, we will create a more passionate and fulfilled generation of people!