You were wrong.
Thirteen is a big year for everyone. I remember being ecstatic to finally call myself a teenager. I could no longer be defined as “just a kid;” I was a teen. It was the first step into my next adventure of life. It was just the first year of a six-year journey. SIX YEARS. I would be a teen for the next six years, that seemed like such a long time in my mind. At the start, I was only in middle school, but by the end I would be a high school graduate. That blew my mind because I couldn’t see past my middle school self.
When I turned thirteen, it was such a big deal to me, so I started planning for the future. I have always been an organized person who likes schedules, so naturally I attempted to schedule out these next six years. I had constructed this list in my mind until my eighth-grade English class when it became a project. We were instructed to write the story of our lives, thus far, including a short biography of our past, our present circumstances and our future plans. Along with this project, we were asked to construct a bucket list of fifty things we want to accomplish in our lifetime. It was perfect. I was now putting together an assignment that I have thought long and hard about for a grade. I was putting my thoughts into words for others to read. My list included everything from graduating high school and making National Honor Society, to petting a kangaroo and memorizing the U.S. Presidents backwards. As far-fetched as some of the items were, I cherished this project.
In eighth-grade, I was a much different person than who I would become in high school. I was confident, optimistic and I had big dreams. My biggest, I recall, was wanting to play in the WNBA. I also remember wanting to own a parking garage full of sports cars. I laugh at this now, because I realize how nearly impossible these dreams were, but at the time I truly believed it would happen. I was a typical, young, naïve teenager. In this plan, I wanted countless awards in basketball and track. I intended to be a four-year letterman in both sports and be remembered as some superstar athlete. Instead, I accomplished everything in another sport that hadn’t crossed my mind. I also wanted to major in interior design and open my own company. Instead, I’m an education major at Ashland University.
The point is, my thirteen-year-old self was wrong about almost everything from the little details to the big picture. The vision I had of myself as a middle-schooler doesn’t line up with the route I took or even the vision I have now, but that does not mean it is a bad thing. As we age, we gain more intelligence and awareness for the world around us and more realistic views. Our likes and dislikes morph to lead us on the right path. Not all of us know in kindergarten or even our freshman year of college what we want to do with the next day, let alone the rest of our life, and that is okay. It is okay to change course in order to live the life we are all destined to live.
