So, now that I'm a senior in high school it's time for me to pick my career and colleges that I'd like to go to, get all my fancy grad stuff ready and try to find somewhere to live at after school. But wait, I didn't know I had to apply to all of these colleges by yesterday? I didn't know that I needed to know what I wanted to do with my life before I'm even an adult? For whatever reason, nobody ever told me this crap until I started 12th grade-- and by then, I'm already behind. Hell, I've been taking college courses (with varying performance) since my 9th grade, and nobody ever decided that I might need to start thinking about this stuff? No teachers, school staff, family, friends, college/high school guidance counselors? How come this happens? And I know I'm not the only one that, at least around where I live (dirt poor around here), isn't guided very well. As we grow up, adults are always asking "what do you want to be when you grow up," and we all say something silly like an astronaut or police officer or firefighter or something similar, but as we (I?) get older, thoughts pop in every now and then about what to actually be. For me, it was Dad, "I want to be an engineer!" Well, that's all fine and dandy, but what if that's not what's actually best? Turns out, I think that I want to be a computer engineer and all of the good (meaning top rated) schools for that are picky: MIT, CMU, Berkely, Stanford, etc., big, well known schools. These are the schools who want people to take the initiative and jump head first into their education, smarts is a big bonus. Well, I'm smart, but I'm unbelievably lazy, so my schooling has been A's and B's with no study skills ever having been developed. Here I am, behind on deciding what I want to do with my life and what school to go to, average grades, no study skills and somebody expects me to just do this like I've done it a million times before? Nobody told me in time to even get good chance at applying to these schools. It took me months to decide on C&EE and research it, then pick schools, and I only got told to do this crap a few months ago. And what do you know, I'm out of time. So, why on Earth is this set up like this? Why does nobody try to help us blind fools learn to see? We can't just know things about society, contrary to a few moral philosophers. Somebody needed point the way, or even just say, "be ready to decide by the time you're a senior." Why is it set up like this anyway? Who thought it was a good idea to tell the people who aren't even adults that they have to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives and actually stick to it? The whole idea of this is just absurd, me thinks. Is/was it like this for you guys? Some of you successful people out there, how did it go for you? (As it is, much of this doesn't actually matter for me since I can't afford most colleges because of my grades and my Dad's income, even though it's reduced and split, it's held against me. And the fact that there are quite a few things that aren't right about how I handle things) Anyway, my whiny rant is more or less ended.
I've heard plenty of "how i got this job" stories. believe me, no matter how hard people try to make it look like that, what you do as a teenager doesn't define the rest of your life. Plenty of people just happened to roll into their jobs and found they liked it, others went 3 or 5 or 10 before they settled for something they liked. Some studied forever, some dropped out early, got a job, went back to school later.
