I bet that every kindergarten teacher out there asked their students this what we thought to be simple question:
What do you want to be when you grow up?
The typical responses that I heard were as follows:
A firefighter.
An astronaut.
A police officer.
A construction worker.
A doctor.
A teacher.
A veterinarian.
An author.
Or a fairy princess who lives in a shiny castle married to her Prince Charming.
I bet you can guess which one of those options was my answer right?
Well as I got older I realized how many times that question has popped up beyond kindergarten.
I realized how much pressure us teenagers are put under when it comes to deciding what we want to do for the rest of our lives.
I realized that I have the rest of my life ahead of me in order to decide all of these long term unanswered questions such as:
What is your declared major in college?
What classes are you going to take junior or senior year?
Where are you thinking of doing internships?
Where are you thinking of studying abroad?
When are you thinking of studying abroad?
Where are you going to live after college?
Or do you want to have kids?
So after this miraculous revelation I have decided that I should take my life one day at a time. Instead of stressing myself about all of these long-term events that are months or years later from where I am right now.
Even though I did declare a major as a freshman (broadcast journalism). I have found my multiple passions in life already. I am thinking about where I want to study abroad. I am thinking about where I want to intern. And I am 99.9% sure that I want to live in New York City after college. I have come to realize that there are people who are the same age as me, people who go to same school as me, and people who are in the same boat as me, who have no idea what to do about their major, passions, studying abroad, interning, or what their life is going to look like after college graduation.
Unfortunately, since we live in a generation where everything (especially technology and the rest of the media) must be fast, accessible, and sooner rather than later. Putting teenagers under pressure about all of these long-term events will supposedly help them decide their final answers quickly. When in reality, it only stresses them out even more because they are just teenagers.
Teenagers are already going through the social pressures of where they fit in, whether or not they want to drink, whether or not they want to smoke, whether or not they want to party, what their hobbies are, how many friends they have, and overall who they are as a person. They should not be solely focusing on factors beyond college over what they really should be focusing on right now: who is the person that they want to become? Instead of who is the person that they are going to become?
Yes focusing on the long-term events in life is very important. But we shouldn’t be focusing on deciding where we are headed every single day for the rest of our lives. Because life isn’t perfect. Things aren’t always going to go as planned. Instead of freaking out and thinking that we aren’t getting anywhere in our lives, we should aim to focus on the positive because who knows? Maybe that one failure that was supposed to determine our fate turns out to be better later on in life.
