It’s no secret that I have no idea what I want to major in, let alone what I want to be doing for the rest of my life. And sure, I’ve heard the “statistically, you’ll change your career 5 times in your life” and “your major doesn’t have to be exactly what you do with your life” more than a handful of times. I have also heard that I will “find my passion.” Almost as soon as the words “undeclared” escape my lips, it’s the first response to come spilling into the conversation.

If I had a dollar for every time someone told me that I would “find my passion,” I wouldn’t have to take out any more student loans. Hey, I might even have enough stocked up that I wouldn’t need a degree at all.

On the surface, those three words seem comforting and casual. Spoken sort of like my ‘passion’ is in the same place that I left my keys – they’ll definitely turn up if I just look a little harder. Don’t worry about it the voice tells me, “you’ve still got time.” These statements stack up, coaxing me to believe that I will simply stumble upon that magical ‘thing’ that I love so much. Sometimes, this golden phrase is followed up with a personal anecdote of that life changing class, the inspiring internship, the sudden moment of clarity.

But what if this sort of passion doesn’t exist for everyone? Not everyone can know from day one of kindergarten that they want to be a doctor or a firefighter or a teacher or a scientist. Right? I can barely choose what I want to eat for dinner. I couldn’t tell you with confidence who I am as a person, what meaningful activities I would choose to fill a completely free day, or the things that I think are most important for me when looking for a job.

I brought this up with my boss at work the other day, and she instantly told me that there is no such thing as ‘a passion.’ You are shaped by your experiences and constantly changing, and there isn’t any one single thing that is the only way for success.

My mom is a firm believer in the no-passion camp. As an undergrad, she studied french literature, economics, and computer science. She went to business school, later got a certificate in Organization Development, and now works as a consultant. Every time I let slip over the phone that someone else has told me to find my passion, she breaks out into an exasperated (and by now quite practiced) spiel: being told to find ‘a passion’ is stressful. We can be good at plenty of different things, and being expected to pick a passion out of thin air isn’t sensical and often not possible. It takes our constantly changing experiences – classes, work, extracurricular activities and hobbies – to work towards understanding what we are good at and have energy around. We can’t expect a magical answer to pop out and come to the rescue. Only from the multiplicity of our experiences can we constantly continue to learn about what seems to be the best next step.

Both my boss and my mom (two of the women I to look up to most) gave me the words that holds much more promise, honesty and truth than the unrealistic ‘find my passion’ catchphrase. Each of these incredibly driven and successful women said without a trace of irony in their voices: “I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”

And maybe that’s the truth of it. Maybe I will always be searching for what feels like a perfect fit. But in the meantime, I will keep learning from the array of activities in my life. And while it would be much more comfortable to confidently rattle off a major and definitive career aspiration, I continue to say that I am still undecided. And that’s okay.