“I don’t know what to do with my future.”
High school is a stressful time. You grow a lot as a person in these four years. Many expect you to graduate with your entire life planned out step-by-step. You feel the impending doom of leaving these safe and familiar halls more and more as time goes on. It all peaks in the fall/winter of senior year. You hear all of your peers making plans, applying to colleges, picking their majors, etc. Everyone seems to know what they want to commit to for the next 40 or so years of their lives. Let me let you in on a little secret, they don’t know everything and they’re just as scared as you.
There is so much pressure from adults, peers and the media to have your life in order by the time you put on that robe and walk across the stage to receive your diploma. However, I view college or any post-graduate plans as the actual time to find yourself. Contrary to popular belief, the major and even the college you chose in high school doesn’t have to be permanent. You can switch majors or even transfer schools if what you originally picked turns out not to be your calling.
I am a big believer that there are different paths for different stages of your life. I think it is totally possible to switch careers throughout your life if what you are doing no longer makes you happy. I personally would much rather switch my career path 100 times than stick to one career because that’s what society tells me to do and stay unhappy. I understand that it is somewhat unrealistic to just change your career when you feel like it. Some careers can be hard to leave or hard to get into without the right background. If you do feel like it is time to move on, try something realistic. Or try something that seems a little out of reach! Sometimes it can be helpful to push yourself. Just make sure you have a back-up plan that you can fall back on if “impossible” turns out to actually be impossible.
Obviously it is helpful to have a loose plan for the next few months or even years, but don’t stress about planning everything down to the second for the next 20 years. Sometimes it can be useless to plan every step of your life. Life is unpredictable and you can plan as much as want, but there will always be unexpected surprises that throw a wrench in those methodical plans. Things change and people change, and so too, can your plans. Don’t feel as if the decision you have to make will drastically affect the rest of your life. Don’t get me wrong it definitely can if you let it, or it can just be the next stepping stone on the long path of your life.
In other words, don’t put so much pressure on yourself to have your future figured out by the time you graduate. We are so incredibly young and we have so much life left ahead of us to find the right path.