Faking a "Passion"

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>Okay, so right now I'm really good at chemistry, and I have probably one of the best chem teachers in... the world (nah lol, but really good and experienced). I want to know if I seriously get involved with chemistry even though I'm not thaaat interested in it. I have intern and research opportunities, and if I try a bit harder probably a good shot at USNCO finalist/summer program/IChO. I want to do this because I don't have a single "passion" or subject that I'm outrageously interested in, and I know that's what colleges like, so I could possibly fake this passion. I don't know how else to improve my chances because I don't have any major thing I like, so maybe I can fake one.</p>

<p>First, I know I should just do what I like and let the college choose me, not the other way around, but I don't like anything that would get me into a good college. And I can't help it, I just want to go to MIT!! I've tried many times to dissuade myself from having this mindset, but I always end up just wanting MIT. Anyone else have this problem? Any suggestions?</p>

<p>I know many people will probably discourage me from doing this chem thing, but please give me your honest opinion.</p>

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<p>I think it’s going to be impossible for you to fake a passion for chemistry. In fact, I think it’s going to be impossible for you to fake passion for anything that you don’t actually enjoy. I would strongly encourage you to explore different fields more and to find something that you’re actually passionate about.</p>

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<p>Hi Jobbin,</p>

<p>I think you should go for the chemistry opportunity. Let me illustrate with an analogy.</p>

<p>Suppose my son says, “Mom, I want to have a social life with girls, but there’s none I reeealllly like. Besides, I’m not sure, I feel sweaty and awkward around them. Should I just give up on the whole thing?” My advice would be for him to ask girls that like him well enough to do social things with him, and to work at listening, and treating them nicely, and to get used to the whole thing. Then, he will either deeping his liking for one of them, or he will find the one that sweeps him off his feet, by which time he will feel comfortable with girls.
In any case, it beats waiting around not talking to girls and being a wallflower.</p>

<p>Similarly, you should try the internship, and try to do it well, and try to find things to like about it. Even if you don’t fall in love with chemistry, you may find something that intrigues you about it and like it a little more than before. In any case, you will know what it feels like to do an internship, to work with adults, to delve into a field more deeply than you can in high school classes. All these things will help you a lot when you do find a passion.</p>

<p>So, no, don’t fake a passion, but do move forward and learn things and be productive anyway. It goes without saying that if a passion comes along, use it ask a guide for charting your course.</p>

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<p>@k4r3n2: Well I do like and enjoy chemistry, I just don’t intend to, for example, major in it. And I think I can convince myself to love chem (idk lol).</p>

<p>I have experimented with many other fields, but have ran into the following problems:
a) My interest in that field runs out or I find myself forcing myself to work.
b) I feel that it’s too late to begin in that field or really have a chance to exemplify my participation/passion in that area. Or it requires too much to catch up (its on top of school/sports/etc.) or get “good” (because it’s so late in the game).
c) Not many opportunities (unlike my situation with chemistry).
d) I have no guide or place to begin (either it’s not available at school/locally or it requires something that’s not realistic online).
e) …</p>

<p>Edit (after reading geomom):
@geomom: Thats very helpful. And I think with more exposure to chemistry the more I will enjoy it.</p>

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<p>Also, your experience with chemistry research will help you in any sort of research or work opportunity you pursue in the future. It is very different from school.</p>

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<p>If there’s one thing that irritates me in all these college discussions, it’s the “passion” angle. I’m sure some small percentage of elite college applicants are actually passionate about – something. Some even smaller percentage of those who are will still have that same passion two or three years hence. On this thin reed college admissions should hang?</p>

<p>It strikes me that “passion” is just a modern buzzword; if I were a college admissions officer I would be a little embarrassed to think I could divine such a thing, or worse, value it as compared to other more objective criteria. I wonder how many kids who were great students but happened to live normal teenage lives like the OP are wondering how they can now satisfy this ill-defined apparent requirement. </p>

<p>Give me a teenager with broad intellectual curiosity any day over a “passionate” kid. </p>

<p>This thread reminds me of a great line from Groucho Marx: “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”</p>

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<p>^^^ Amusingly enough, that small percentage with ‘passion’ has a LOT of overlap with students who get into MIT. Someone with broad intellectual curiosity would have a rough time making it through the long nights doing problem sets. An extreme love for what I do is often the only thing that keeps me motivated.</p>

<p>Seriously, guys, if you aren’t passionate about your major, you’re either going to transfer or really, really want to. And yes, I do know this from experience.</p>

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<p>Heh, yeah. Its just that “satisfy[ing these]… requirements” is what gets us where we want to be, whereas “intellectual curiosity” doesn’t (from a typical student’s perspective). And for me, I truly wish to exploit my intellectual curiosity, but school and other requirements must come first…</p>

<p>And I can’t control the admissions people’s value on “passion.”</p>

<p>Also, my passion in high school doesn’t have to be my passion/major at MIT.</p>

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<p>There are plenty of people passionate about science or school in general, and who would enjoy several different majors. Frankly, it’s rare to have someone who is an absolute star in one area of science and who doesn’t ace their other subjects. I disagree with others on how to measure “passion”, though, and agree that it’s become a meaningless buzzword. The people jumping up and down saying how enthusiastic they are about stuff in essays or in person usually aren’t the same people that really have a passion for it. Most of the time, people who are good at science are introverts.</p>

<p>Take the top performers overall and you’ll get the most passionate. And regardless, the point is to get the people whose talent and work ethic will result in them getting good results. If you have “passion” for something, you should have been using it to fuel results. If there are people with passion but lacking in the talent area, they probably would be better off elsewhere.</p>

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<p>I don’t think it’s a problem in and of itself not to be sure what you want to do for the rest of your life as a high school junior. High school and college are times to explore things that could potentially interest you, and it’s not bad to say, “I tried this chemistry thing, and I found out it wasn’t for me.” My lab had a summer high school student last summer, and although we do neurobiology, he was interested in majoring in EECS. No problem – he had a blast and learned about what we do, even if he doesn’t want to do it himself. </p>

<p>It does worry me to some degree to hear that you’re discounting the possibility that you could be interested in chemistry a priori. Getting involved in research purely as a resume-building activity doesn’t bode well – to be honest, science is not that fun if you don’t want to be doing it.</p>

<p>So I support the idea of having a fun time doing research in a chemistry lab, and maybe doing some contests if you find yourself liking it, even if you think or know it’s not what you want to study in college. I do not support the idea of muscling through something you dislike for the sake of MIT admission – what’s the point of getting into MIT at that cost, anyway?</p>

<p>Incidentally, I agree with Karen that, completely outside the college admissions process, the students who are happiest at MIT tend to be the ones who know what they want to do, or at least are capable of falling in love with something. MIT is not an easy place to be if you’re commitment-phobic. I have certainly known people who came to MIT unsure of what they wanted to do, or who changed majors a few times, and who graduated successfully. But it’s easier if you’re laser-focused on something you’ve wanted to do since you could speak (see: my husband, aerospace engineering).</p>

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<p>This is definitely true. I speak as someone who does not have laserlike focus on one particular thing. This certainly made MIT difficult.</p>

<p>But I will also disagree that “having passion” means being extremely dedicated to one particular thing. I consider myself a very passionate person, but I don’t think I could give you a specific answer if you asked me what I was passionate about. I’m passionate about whatever it is I’m doing at the moment. If I absolutely had to pick, I might say “problem solving,” which is basically the broadest answer of all time.</p>

<p>Maybe that’s not what “passion” really means, but I think in the context of admissions it has less to do with “oh my god I have wanted to be a chemist since I was three and everything in my life is about chemistry” and more about being a motivated person, who brings energy and vigor to whatever tasks they encounter- whether that’s chemistry, chemistry, and more chemistry, or computers, politics, theater, economics, knitting, and sometimes dog walking. I see passion as less of a feature, and more of a quality, and one that plenty of high school students exhibit, at that.</p>

<p>That said, faking it (and by “it” I really mean anything in life) is a really bad idea. However, as others have said, that’s not a reason to NOT try these opportunities you have. You absolutely should. Maybe you will become OMG PASSIONATE ABOUT CHEMISTRY and keep doing more of it. Maybe you will not. If not, move on to something else.</p>

<p>As I said, I don’t think passion is really about standing out in one particular thing. But even if others disagree, what Mollie said is even more important. If you have to fake being the kind of person who would enjoy MIT…why are you even applying?</p>

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<p>[Study</a> Hacks Blog Archive Should Your Major Be Your Passion?](<a href=“http://calnewport.com/blog/2009/07/14/should-your-major-be-your-passion/]Study”>Should Your Major Be Your Passion? - Cal Newport)</p>

<p>Interesting article on “passion”. I won’t say I absolutely agree, but I think it’s worth a read.</p>

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<p>It’s been said already, but I’ll back it up.</p>

<p>Go ahead and try. If you really end up not liking it, that was worth finding out too. Otherwise, hurray.</p>

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For the record, I absolutely agree with this – I think I was being too narrow above, and perhaps seeing things through my own I-knit-a-DNA-scarf-for-fun lens. :)</p>

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<p>Sometimes the thing you really like is hidden in other things. I talked to the daughter of one of my friends, who claimed that she didn’t have a focus. She swam, but she wasn’t a great swimmer, and ended up coaching the youngest kids as a summer job. She went to church, was lukewarm about the youth group and had volunteered to teach Sunday school, but didn’t feel that was an EC. She did various jobs on the town youth committee, including putting together an environmental education program.</p>

<p>When I said: what you really like is to teach, she said, “Yes!” And with that knowledge, that no matter what the venue, she gravitated toward teaching others, she became excited about honing that skill.</p>

<p>Sometimes you just have to try a lot of things, and see how you react, to understand your strengths. Don’t expect every activity to unleash a tidal wave of positive feeling. Move forward, invest yourself, learn how you learn things, learn new skills, and it will come together sooner or later.</p>

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<p>go for it, making USNCO camp will give you better standing on college apps than pretty much anything else you might find.</p>

<p>Passion is developed. I didn’t like math until I got good at it, and the problems got interesting.</p>

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<p>“c) Not many opportunities (unlike my situation with chemistry).”</p>

<p>Then this is the solution. You may try either ways to find what interests you: while working with chemistry or in opportunities you create yourself. While the latter is more like trial-and-error, which means low efficiency, the former may help you get it more quickly, but narrow down the list of things you encounter. </p>

<p>IMO I think the former is way better. A philosopher of the medieval time says, “There are three things you should do: 1 - the one you love, 2 - the one you are good at, and 3 - the one you can dedicate most with.” First, the experience you gain on the long way you were with chemistry may help you a lot to do something well (I’m emphasizing the important role of the “2-” thing). Only when you’re good at something can you find what you should dedicate to, how and when to dedicate. And what you dedicate to is the one you love. (note: this is my opinion, not the author’s opinion :slight_smile: Anyway I found it so true for both “passion” and “ultimate passion”, which I mention below)</p>

<p>Well we can say that passion is what you love. Okay, there is nothing wrong with it. However, passion is a function of time mathematically, and it’s unlikely a constant function. When you like/ love to do this thing, it is your passion. But the other times when you don’t, it’s not. What I’m trying to say is that passion is somehow misunderstood by people, that it has to be something you have to stick yourself with in the rest of your life. IMO it’s simply what you love at a time in your life. The ultimate passion is the one that you end your life with, you dedicate your life to, not passion. From Oxford’s dictionary: “Passion = a very strong feeling of love, hatred, anger, enthusiasm, etc.” :D</p>

<p>So what the adcom is looking for, I think, is whether the applicant is really passionate about what he/she loves, whether he/she can dedicate his/her time and effort to pursue it, whether he/she does paint his/her life more colorful, enjoy life and not afraid of hardship. Again, in the dictionary: “Passionate = having or showing strong feelings of enthusiasm for sth or belief in sth.” I don’t think they want the applicant to dedicate his/her life to it; that’s why we can switch major even when we have already got in or been studying for years.</p>

<p>It’s just that whether the applicant is ready to bring the idea in his brain and the enthusiasm in the heart into action that matters. That is what makes the difference, what brings one success in not only the college time, but also maybe the rest of his life.</p>

<p>But about the ultimate passion, it’s another story, and everyone has their own stories. One may figure it out at the end of his life.</p>