During finals, it gets tough asking people how they're doing. If they're legitimately doing well and they're happy and peppy, they're obnoxious.

If they're tired, overworked and mentally fried, you feel for them, but they're kind of depressing. Sure, some people are well-adjusted and perfectly balanced, but they seem like they're in the minority. The stress and anxiety is understandable; this is a trying time. Yet many college graduates find themselves with the same sort of anxiety even after they leave school.

Daniel Gulati of the Harvard Business Review recently published an article titled "Why We're Unhappy," in which he discusses how many people in their 20s are generally unhappy with their situations even when they have high-paying jobs and steady relationships. He goes on to describe a "hollowness" that these people feel despite their success.

He attributes this hollowness to three main points: High-paying jobs at large companies are no longer as secure as they used to be; Facebook and social networks create a sort of "keeping up with the Joneses" philosophy where everyone values their own success based on the accomplishments they see others having; and young people are graduating from college often and often have many more opportunities available to them, increasing anxiety about what choices are "right." His solution to these pitfalls is to essentially worry more about passion than money and to experiment with new areas.

I couldn't agree more with his solution.

I know it sounds naïve and idealistic to say to forget about money and to follow your dreams.

But it doesn't have to be that ungrounded in reality. If not "follow your dreams," at least try something new.

How many people stuck in law classes would be happier writing, playing music, even working in a lab or just doing anything else? It may not be realistic to expect people to drop everything they've been working on for the chance to find something else that makes them happy, but at least it's worth considering.

The more engrained someone is in a pursuit, the scarier the prospect of changing directions becomes, but sometimes you just have to take a risk.

This definitely isn't what parents like to hear.

When so many parents are helping their children attend world-class universities, they're investing in a future. I can imagine their uneasiness upon hearing their investment may be wasted on the six strings of a guitar, but life isn't just about business and money.

The intangible value of happiness should outweigh six-figure salaries. As much as they may fight you, taking a risk to follow your passions is an independent endeavor and your parents will still love you.

Think about how many people enter Brandeis, or any school for that matter, wanting to be doctors, lawyers, bankers and corporate businessmen. They often follow strict paths filled with classes they don't enjoy and that might not even come to them naturally. Their cause is noble—who doesn't want a respectable, high-paying job?—but some seem miserable and unsure of exactly why they're pursuing a certain field. Too often, those pursuits are the default choices of the intelligent, ambitious and ultimately lost students. I'm not trying to paint people with too broad a brush, but it's something we've all encountered.

The same people who are currently "occupying" financial districts or stand opposed to the same institutions may have ended up working at those banks if the offer was large enough. And I get it: financial stability is important and everyone has to grow up sometime, but perhaps the willingness to "sell-out" so quickly is what's leading to so many technically successful but realistically troubled graduates. A huge part of the issue is that our society idealizes college and white-collar jobs. Most college graduates don't want to work hard at labor-intensive jobs even if it means financial security.

They see their degree as a free pass to never having to do that type of work, especially when they could have done it without four years of education and debt.

They often never consider that a job like that could make them happier than life in a cubicle.

What this nation really loves is success. It doesn't have to be multimillion dollar success, but success nonetheless. Everyone wants to be accomplished and the easiest, most pain-free way to be successful is to get a degree, find a job that pays well and join the upper-middle class.

What people don't realize is that following a dream doesn't mean you can't be successful or that success is all-or-nothing. Following a dream carries with it a connotation of risk and improbability, but really it's about diversifying experiences and finding something that evokes a passion, then finding a way of making that into work.

There are a thousand clichés I could use to convince you to take a chance, but you've probably heard them all, and they probably haven't worked.

That's because no inspirational quote can successfully diminish your fear and anxiety at trying something new.

At the end of the day, it's about an individual taking it upon him or herself to find happiness. We might as well start while we're young rather than find ourselves in the future wishing we'd tried more things while we could.