By: Nora Green Editor-In-Chief (’23)
If you’ve ever been a senior before or honestly been in high school before, how many times have you heard the words, “What are you doing after high school?”.
When people ask that, I know they mean no harm, but that’s a loaded question. You’re asking a teenager what they plan on doing for the rest of their life; someone who is not done growing yet and won’t be fully “grown” until they are 25 years old. How is that person supposed to know what to do?
Don’t get me wrong, people try their hardest to give some sort of advice on what to do: “Make sure you go to a good college so you can get a good degree”, “degrees lead to money”, “do what makes you happy,” and so on.
But does that really help? The reality is, you don’t know what you are going to do. You may think that you want to be a doctor, but two months into your freshman year you realize that chemistry is not your thing so now you have to change everything up and rethink your whole future.
Or what if you go to college for a little bit, but then decide that that is not what you want to do? It’s hard coming back from that. You had your plan for the next four years but now you have to rethink it and replan it because you didn’t get a full look at every option.
Teens should not be expected to either start working or go to college for a degree that will lead you to a good future as soon as you get out of high school. There should be more opportunities and more time to try the different degrees or the different futures that you could choose.
For example, you might really like anatomy in school but when you actually start your pre-med path you could realize that you just liked anatomy, not everything else. Or you could really enjoy math in high school so you choose to be an engineer, but you may then realize that all that math and figuring things out isn’t for you.
I’m not saying that high school should be longer or anything like that, I’m just saying that you can not expect your 18 year old self to have the same interests or wants that your 30 year old self wants. But it is that 18 year old’s choices that influence that 30 year old’s options.
To the stressed out teenager, stop being so hard on yourself and stressing yourself out. Despite what people say, you have your whole life to figure out what you want to do. Take as long as you need.