One day I’m hoping a boy will pass me a note during nap time, and the next, I’m taking a three hour test that could give me credit hours in the college I might attend. I’m a junior in high school. I’m 17 years old. I don’t know what I want to do or be for the rest of my life. Your career becomes your label. By my senior year, I’m supposed to decide what my title is going to be for the rest of my live. I realize it has to be done and that I’m supposed to be mature enough to handle these types of decisions. I just think that time goes by too quickly.
During the holidays, “the future” seems to be the perfect topic to start a conversation. “Where are you going to go to college?” “What is your major going to be?” These are the questions that begin the awkwardness of my time spent with extended family. Not only do I not have a good answer, but the discussion starts to make me think about the things I am not ready for. I want to impress my family, especially the ones I only see every other year. It gets embarrassing when my response to almost every one of their analytical questions is, “I’m not sure yet.”
When I think about how old I am and how the last twelve years have been spent going to school, or dreading it when we were out on break, it amazes me. You spend so much of your time as a child learning. Your schools build you up to a point in your life where you can determine your own interests and possibly decide a path that you believe your life will take. This point of “decision making” is catching up to me and I feel like if I slow down or take a breather in my academics, I’m just going to get trampled.
High school is said to be some of the best years in one’s life. But, throughout so many good times and memories that will last forever, I will end up making some of the most serious decisions regarding my future. When I write my resume, I question myself on whether it’s good enough or whether I’ve taken the right classes. When I choose my classes for my senior year, I already know I’m going to ask myself if it’s worth the time to take those extra AP classes, or if it would be more beneficial to double up on a core class. Stress. So much stress. Before high school, I would think about how I probably would be a doctor because I loved watching Grey’s Anatomy. At that point in time, my immature mind didn’t make the connection to my dislike for science with that career interest. It’s things like that that make me remember how much we all change in the three years we spend in high school.
Hopefully, throughout the next half of this school year, my interests will become more defined and my options will become more realistic. By the next time Thanksgiving and Christmas roll around, my goal is to actually have a solid answer to the 5,000 questions that revolve around my future. I will go to college. I will get a job in a field I enjoy. I will be able to support myself. I just have to decide how to get there and how to make the right choices to finalize my ambitions.