Which is better?

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about our futures. Her career path was quite a bit different than mine, in that she was given a job in college as an undergrad, and then stayed on when she graduated. She was literally passed from that position into another one, like a baseball player being traded, and that's the same position she's been in ever since (not even a single promotion in over a decade. Pay attention kiddies- it's a good thing to climb the ladder and push yourself. The plan on complacency fails miserably when you're let go.) Needless to say, she's having a mid-life crisis about "what she wants to be when she grows up" now that she's unemployed. After discussing how I discovered that medicine was my goal, she said, "well you've got it easy- at least you know what you want to do with your life."

Now, she knows all about my goal of med school (I try to not refer to it as a dream- that's intangible and imaginary) and she's very familiar with the effort I've put out. So I was pretty surprised she thought that the "hard" part was over- finding out what I wanted to do.

This isn't a straight line that goes from "Deciding career - Working to career - Achieving career". I've spent just about five years since deciding to go back to school, full of countless hours of taking classes, volunteering, studying, and applying to schools, complete with the dizzying highs and crushing lows in between (once I cried for a day straight with my last rejection on my first application cycle). I even added up the money once- not even counting my original degrees, I've spent close to 10 grand achieving this goal, and I'm not accepted yet. Yet, apparently the hard part is over for me- I made a decision!

Why do I find this so irritating? Because I feel like it's belittling the hard work that actually goes into achieving a goal. She's never had to work for something- it's been handed to her, and here she is, telling me the difficult part is picking a career, and its all downhill from here.

I know that for some people, discovering what they want to do with their life is difficult- maybe they love math but hate school, love teaching but hate the administrative red tape, or love stripping but hate attention, I don't know. But don't act like once you know what you want, that it's just given to you, or *poof* you get it like a wish. I guess that's the problem with handing your kids everything- they value nothing.