A Message from a Student to a Student by: Luke Simmons

High school is an interesting phenomenon; it is a time full of more responsibilities than you have ever had to manage in your life, yet it feels like you still can't do anything on your own. It feels like you just finished your last year of middle school and said goodbye to all of your favorite middle school teachers, and then all of the sudden you are a freshman being asked what you have decided to do with your future. You are 14 years old, just finishing the first major growth spurt of your life, and you already start to receive pressure from others that always seem to want to know "what you want to be in the future." Whether it be parents, teachers, guidance counselors, or friends, everyone seems to have the same question on their mind, the question that we have been asked since we finally learned how to talk: "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

In reality, this is the most loaded question that can ever be asked of anyone. They are asking you to tell them what your future will be, yet can anyone really know? When we were little, we used to always respond with the stereotypical answers mainly consisting of firefighters, police officers, doctors, teachers, scientists, and the occasional dancer or musician. We answered this way because of how they were the only jobs that we all understood at that young an age. Despite our determination throughout kindergarten and elementary school that we were going to be the best police officer or the nicest teacher, those ideas almost always change in an instant.

Once we all hit middle school, we started to learn that not every one of us really want to be that dream job that we had told our families about since we were 3 feet tall. Middle school started to expose us to the world as a whole, and it became clear that it is a lot bigger than we had ever imagined. After we finally accept the fact that not everyone is a teacher or cop, we start to branch off from our peers and really start to think about what would make us happy in the future. Although many people can decide right then and there their exact profession that they would pursue after high school, I was, and still am, one of the people that was overwhelmed at the prospect of deciding my future. I understood that I was still so young and still had so much left to learn, which left me with no clue as to what I wanted to do. If I remember correctly, I went from scientist to marine biologist to biologist to forensic scientist to now, which fast forwards us to high school.

High school is a sudden change in school, friends, families, and relationships. With our entire lives changing before our eyes, it becomes hard to focus on one thing. It feels like we are just being thrown straight into the ocean without learning how to swim, and we have to try our best to stay afloat. Every teacher, coach, and parent expects you to live up to the standard of the perfect person that is somehow able to do everything possible from the highest classes to varsity sports. In reality, we can't possibly put our full attention on one thing, because there is so much to balance on our plates in high school that it just isn't possible to focus on one thing and still have a social life. That brings me back to the point of the future. While attempting to manage all of the stresses of high school, there is still that nagging question in the back of our minds pulling at our brains and hearts to commit to something that we don't even have sufficient knowledge of. It can easily become a very stressful and overwhelming question, which leads many high schoolers to simply ignore the question and write it off as too much to handle.
In reality, we can never really know and be able to fully answer people when they ask "what we want to be when we grow up," because we never really stop growing up. Think about it. There is always an unknown future looming ahead of us no matter our age. No matter how comfortable or uncomfortable we are in the life that we have designed up to the current time, the future is always uncertain. Everything could change in an instant, for the worse or the better.
So this leads me to what I have recently come to terms with that has made my life in high school a whole lot easier. The future is uncertain, so there is no use stressing over it. Now don't get me wrong, I don't mean slack off and hope that everything turns out okay. I instead mean live in the moment and do everything possible to set yourself up for a bright and optimistic future. Why waste your energy worrying about something that is out of your control when you can use that energy to propel yourself onto a path that can make the road to success smooth and comfortable.
The reality is that no one can tell the future, no matter how much their heart is set on being the best heart surgeon or most amazing Broadway singer. I instead implore everyone to instead invest time and energy into the present, because the future is always uncertain. In my experience, with that philosophy, everything just falls into place. Nothing is ever perfect, but it seems to continually set me up with a future that I am excited to experience. Until then, its time to work hard and enjoy the ride.