Would You Want to Know Your Future?

For some college students, knowing what their future will hold is an intriguing thought, while others think that the charm of life is that it’s unknown. There is a whole industry devoted to reading into your future, and that industry makes billions of dollars annually. According to IBIS- World’s Psychic Services market research report (Oct. 2015), the industry’s approximate revenue is two billion dollars.

The accuracy of psychics varies immensely, but sometimes they do get it right. Who knows whether this is by luck or chance? I would like to think that there is a psychic out there who knows everything, to whom I could go and find out if I will be successful, reach my goals, and live long enough to witness the end of corn syrup. But then again, isn’t life great in the sense that it’s organic and unknown? With everything else, we can turn to facts to find answers, but when it comes to our future, it’s a combination of what we choose and what happens around us that we cannot change.

The services within the psychic industry include many different things, such as fortune telling, tarot card reading, astrology readings, aura reading, mediumship, and palmistry. According to a study done by the Pew Research Center in 2009, approximately 15 percent of Americans have visited a psychic or fortune-teller. The study also shows no change over the past 20 years of the number of Americans who consulted a fortuneteller or psychic.

Junior accounting major, Julia Raie, went to a psychic in a mall not too long ago, but said that her experience wasn’t what she’d hoped for. “Nothing she said was helpful, or applied to me,” Raie said. It was as if she was pulling information out of thin air.” Raie chose to visit a psychic “If someone could tell me my future with 100 percent accuracy, I would try it again,” she said. “I would like to know if I’d be okay financially, and if I would have a healthy and extended family.”

Christopher Silva, a senior political science major, agreed. “If there was a psychic that could tell my future with one hundred percent accuracy, then I wouldn’t mind knowing my future,” Silva said.

For senior English major, Melissa Nosel, she believes that some psychics are real. “I think some people are capable of feeling the other side,” Nosel said. “I visited a psychic a long time ago, but I didn’t get the sense that she was real. I would go again only if I knew that I went to someone credible.”