Underneath
What's going on underneath #
Three things that tend to sit under the words.
Many people choose a subject for a mix of reasons: it made sense to them, a teacher brought it alive, it simply felt like theirs.
Some heard it said about an older sibling or cousin first.
Underneath, a rule can form: “I should have it all figured out by now.”
Reactions
What people often do #
- Keep a neat, rehearsed answer ready for every gathering
- Name a job title just to bring the question to an end
- Make a joke about it before anybody else can
- Start doubting the subject that felt right a month ago
- Change the topic, and feel the question follow you home
The deck
The story in 6 cards #
Six short cards, from the moment to letting go.
The raised eyebrow at lunch
Family lunch in Riyadh. You mention how much you enjoy your history degree. Your uncle raises an eyebrow and asks 'and what will you do with that?' Everyone waits for your answer. You say something about options. The conversation moves on, but you sit there feeling small, the subject you love suddenly feeling like something you need to defend. For a moment, everything else goes quiet.
Justify what you study
Underneath sits a rule: 'I have to justify what I study.' It sounds practical. Everyone wants a good future. But look at what it does: it turns the subject you love into a case you have to argue. Every family meal becomes a trial, and the joy you feel when you learn starts to come with a side of doubt.
Why we want our choices respected
We hold it because we want our choices to be respected. Lots of people grow up with some version of this rule, and it often made good sense at the time. Maybe you chose this subject because it truly excites you. Maybe others in the family chose safer paths. Either way, wanting your choice respected isn't arrogant. It comes from wanting your interests to count. That deserves kindness, not blame.
The doubt each question plants
Each 'what will you do with that?' plants a seed of doubt. None of it shows from the outside, but you feel it. You start explaining yourself before anyone asks. You downplay what you study. You wonder if you made a mistake. The excitement you feel in class starts to shrink, and the question follows you into the lecture hall.
Is justifying it worth it?
Ask yourself honestly: has having the perfect answer ever stopped the question? Or has it mostly made you doubt something you love? Many people build good lives from subjects others questioned. Nobody can say for sure what any path holds. Only you can answer that, and there is no wrong answer. Either way, one raised eyebrow isn't the measure of your choice. Is holding this rule so tightly worth it?
Loving it and finding out
Letting go doesn't mean you stop thinking about your future. It means your subject no longer has to be defended to be worth studying. You can say 'I love it, and I'm finding out', and leave it there. It doesn't happen all at once, and it doesn't need to. That's where some peace comes back: your studies become yours to enjoy, not a case to win.
If your choice of study is ever met with threats, being frightened, or being kept from it, that is something else, and worth taking seriously.
The flip
The old rule, and a new one to try #
The old ruleI have to justify what I study.
A new rule to tryI love what I study, and I'm finding out where it leads.
For next time
Try it next time #
- Step 1
Have one short answer ready: 'I love it, and I'm finding out'
- Step 2
Read one thing about your subject just for fun
- Step 3
Name to yourself one thing it has taught you
Want to talk it through?
“What was the moment you first knew this subject was the one you wanted?”
Free and private. No sign-up to start. The chat opens with this question.
Everything this deck knows
Go deeper #
What it sounds like, where it comes from, what it costs, and other ways to see it. Every question opens a chat on it.
How it lands
What was said
A friendly question with a lot folded inside it #
An aunt at a family get-together, a neighbour in the lift, a classmate's parent at the gate, a teacher signing a form. “What will you do with that degree?” and a subject someone chose becomes a question about everything after it.
It's often asked in a light tone, between other questions, and it can seem harmless. Yet it asks for a finished plan about years that haven't happened, from someone who may still be in the middle of finding out what they like.
When did you last hear it, or something like it?Talk about this ›
What did you answer, and how close was that answer to what you actually think about the subject?Talk about this ›
The first few seconds
Why a ready answer jumps out first #
Some people describe a quick tightening, a smile held a moment too long, a tidy answer pulled out as if from a pocket. Others go vague, laugh, and steer the talk to something lighter before the follow-up can arrive.
A question about the years ahead, asked in front of others, can feel like a test with no right answer, and the reaction often comes before any thinking. The real answer, if there is one, tends to show up later, on the way home.
What did you do in the first second: reach for a ready answer, turn it aside, or freeze?Talk about this ›
What might that say about how much the subject means to you?Talk about this ›
Why it lands
It skips the subject and asks about the payoff #
“What do you enjoy about it?” is about the subject. “What will you do with that?” skips the subject and goes straight to a payoff, as if the only good reason to study something were where it leads. The mind can hear the choice itself being doubted.
Many people choose a subject for a mix of reasons: it made sense to them, a teacher brought it alive, it simply felt like theirs. The question tends to leave room for only one kind of reason, and the others go unasked.
What were your own reasons for choosing it, before anyone asked you to defend them?Talk about this ›
Which of those reasons has nobody asked about yet?Talk about this ›
The voice inside
When the question follows you into class #
Hear it often enough and it can move in. “What is this even for?” “I should have a plan by now.” “Maybe everyone else chose better.” Sometimes it speaks up in the middle of a lecture that was, a minute earlier, interesting.
The relative has gone home, but the question now runs on its own: every assignment weighed against a job that doesn't exist yet, every good class followed by a small worry. Because it sounds like your own voice, it can pass for being sensible.
Whose voice asks it when it asks in your head?Talk about this ›
Is that voice curious about the subject at all, or only about where it might lead one day?Talk about this ›
Where it comes from
Where it can come from
For some people, a choice needed a map attached #
Some people grew up hearing the same short list of respectable paths named at every gathering, and noticed that other subjects got a pause and a polite “and then?” Some heard it said about an older sibling or cousin first.
In some families, a clear path was a way of feeling steady about the years ahead, and the reasons vary from home to home. What a young person can quietly conclude is that a choice needs a finished plan attached before it gets taken seriously.
When did you first feel that liking a subject wasn't reason enough on its own?Talk about this ›
Who was in the room at the time, and what did their face do?Talk about this ›
The belief under it
A quiet rule about having it all mapped out #
Underneath, a rule can form: “I should have it all figured out by now.” Some people carry a quieter version of it: “A choice isn't a real choice until I can explain exactly where it goes.”
Rules like this feel like being responsible, the way checking a map before a long drive feels like plain sense. That is exactly why they are worth looking at, because not every choice arrives with a map, and people make them anyway.
Some people trace a rule like this back to early years; others find it arrived later on. Either way, it can be looked at. Which rooms does it still fit, and which not?
What it costs
What it costs
What defending a choice can cost #
It can mean dreading family get-togethers, rehearsing answers on the drive there, or enjoying a subject a little less each time it has to be defended. Some people start describing their course in the vaguest words they can find, so the question has less to hold on to.
There is a quieter price too. When a subject has to justify itself all the time, the curiosity that chose it can get crowded out by worry about the years ahead, and a year that could have been spent exploring gets spent explaining.
Not out of weakness. Carrying a question nobody can answer yet is heavy.
What has it cost in the last year: a class enjoyed less, a gathering dreaded, a plan picked mostly because it was easy to explain?Talk about this ›
If it stays as it is
Five more years of needing the whole map #
Picture one ordinary Tuesday on a day when “every choice needs a finished plan” is loud. What is in it: the classes, the conversations, the choices made mostly because they're easy to explain? It's only a picture to look at, nothing to fix.
Perhaps it holds an interesting option passed over because it would need explaining, a class picked for how it sounds at a get-together, a rehearsed line ready for the next relative. Maybe something that pulled at you, left for another time.
None of this is a forecast, and the picture can be set aside whenever you like. What, if anything, do you notice as you look at it?
Another way to see it
Another way to see it
Who at that table knows their next ten years? #
“What will you do with it?” asks for an answer about years that haven't happened.
A subject can be studied for what it teaches, how it trains a mind to think, the people met along the way, or simply because it was interesting. Those reasons are harder to fit into one sentence at a get-together, but they still count as reasons.
How many people at that table could say exactly what their own next several years hold?Talk about this ›
Is not knowing that the same as having chosen wrong?Talk about this ›
If a younger cousin told you they had chosen something because it lit them up, what would you want them to hear from you first, before any question about jobs?Talk about this ›
Noticing it sooner
What shows up when the reasons are looked at again #
When some people look again at why they chose what they chose, they find the reasons clearer than the question made them feel: a class that stayed with them, a book, a problem they couldn't stop turning over. Sometimes the reasons have shifted, and that's worth noticing too.
Others notice who in their life asks about the subject itself, with real interest: a friend who wants to hear about a lecture, a teacher who lends a book. Those voices were there all along; they just weren't sitting at that particular table.
Which of those voices has gone quiet lately, and what would it ask you about the subject if it had the chance to sit down with you for an hour?Talk about this ›
Making peace with it
No need for an answer that satisfies everyone #
Making peace doesn't mean having a perfect answer ready, or pretending the question doesn't land. It means that one question at one gathering gets less say over how the subject feels on a Monday morning.
Some people find it lighter once they stop trying to produce an answer that would satisfy every relative. That answer is hard to find, because each person has a different picture in mind, and chasing it keeps their pictures in charge of yours.
Some rooms won't take a half-formed answer kindly, and you don't have to test them.
What would it be like to let the question stay theirs, and give an answer only as full as you choose?Talk about this ›
A truer sentence
A line to carry into the next gathering #
If “I've picked the wrong thing” has started running, there's no need to argue with it head on. Some people keep a line like this ready: “I chose this for reasons that are mine, and the rest is still being worked out.”
It doesn't have to feel true yet. It is a line some people try on, and some find that, said quietly before a get-together, it gives the subject a little more room than the old question did.
What would a truer sentence be in your own words, one that is honest about not knowing everything without giving up what you do know?Talk about this ›
What to let be
Some of it can be left at the door #
Not every “what will you do with that?” needs a five-point plan, a list of job titles, or a defence of the subject. Some of it can be noticed, felt for a moment, and put down, like a coat left on a chair by the door.
That isn't giving up. It's choosing where your energy goes, and some people say it leaves more room for the subject itself, and for the people who ask about it because they're curious.
Putting the question down for tonight doesn't mean it was fine, or that it's settled. It only means it doesn't have to come along to the next class, or into every conversation about the years ahead.
If it loosened
And if the rule loosened, even a notch #
Imagine, only as a picture, the rule a notch quieter. A choice can be real before its whole route is known. What is the first thing that feels different, even slightly?
Small things can be enough, such as a lecture enjoyed without a worry following it, a friend told what's interesting about the subject, or a book in that field read just for fun. What would your first small thing be?
Nothing here needs to be said to anyone. What comes up is yours to keep, and worth noticing. If you'd like to look at it properly, a chat is one tap away.
Small things to try
Something to try
A few small things people try #
- Name it in your head: “there's the what-will-you-do question again”
- Notice one thing about the subject that interested you this week
- Ask yourself quietly: whose picture of the years ahead is this question using?
- Let “I'm still working it out” count as a full answer, even if only in your head
- Notice who asks about the subject with real interest, and how that feels
Small, private and optional. Try whichever feels doable.
Pick a question
Talk it through #
Tap one. A chat with Dr. Thoughts opens on that question: free, private, no sign-up to start.
- What was the moment you first knew this subject was the one you wanted?
- When the question came, what did you actually want to say about the subject?
- Who in your life asks about what you study because they genuinely want to know?
- On an ordinary day when the finished-plan rule is loud, what would you still be putting off?
- If the need for a plan eased a little, what would you notice first?