Embracing Multipotentialites

Ever since the early years of childhood, adults have posed the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?," and that career discussion only gets more serious and anxiety-inducing as people age. As far as writer and artist Emilie Wapnick sees it, such a question frames one's career too narrowly. For her, some people are "multipotentialites" with all sorts of interests.

Wapnick herself is a multipotentialite, explaining that when she was younger she would get incredibly interested in a certain subject, dive into it and gain skills, but then become bored and eventually drop it. This cycle would continually repeat itself, and it led to anxiety for her, as she worried that she had trouble committing or wouldn't be able to make a career.

She lays this anxiety at the feet of how society asks the above mentioned question. Rather than framing one's life and career as a process of narrowing down choices and eliminating extraneous options, she believes we should embrace and encourage people who have many interests.