As someone who has gone through close to 12 years of school, the end of the year has slowly but surely become something that I dread. Sure, the warm weather and feeling of summer is exciting, but my lousy attempts at keeping my academic motivation have been less than successful to say the least. 

     There’s a lot of pressure to do well on finals. The duration of my junior year has been filled with nothing but high expectations and not being able to meet those expectations. I know a lot of us probably feel like the rest of our lives are at our fingertips, but that is more than likely not the case. 

     Think about the amount of times you changed what you wanted to do when you grew up when you were little. 

      Veterinarian. 

      Wait, no, a tree doctor! 

      Maybe an interior designer?

     None of which I have any interest in at the ripe old age of 16. 

      So why am I expected to know where I want to go, what I want to do and who I want to be for the rest of my life when I’m less than a quarter of the way through it? I mean, I have an idea of what I want the rest of my life to look like, but the questions that remains in the back of my head is:

      Will I be happy? Will I make enough money? 

      Things of that nature. Unfortunately, there’s no way I can find those things out without just getting pushed our of the nest. 

     As I’ve watched my older brother and older friends move onto their days as a college student, I get excited to be experiencing the same things as them. The urge to grow up and have the knowledge that those people I look up to have is really what keeps me going. Time isn’t just going to stop so I need to try and keep up.