What the Future Holds

Sleep, Eat, Study, Run. These are the four building blocks of my day to day repetitive life. I do each of these not because I find immediate joy from them, but simply because I need to survive, and eventually make it in this fast paced, competitive world we live in. With the constant reminder that a poor grade on a math test or literature assignment will directly cause me to be working at McDonald's one day, I am expected to perform my best and challenge myself in every thing I do. In order to live a purposeful and successful life, kids in high school are stressed by their parents, peers, teachers, and coaches to achieve goals that were set from the day they entered this world. These goals are merely thought of as the impossible or unimaginable in the eyes of a busy, average student in high school, yet they are expected to be met by those who set them in the first place. What goes through a sixteen year old's head while they are taking the PSAT's or playing in a football game against a rival high school can not begin to relate to the big picture that parents and mentors have engraved in their heads. We only know what we have seen or learned so far and can not fully comprehend the idea of completing a college application and dealing with the suspense of getting in or not, and the impact it will have on our career choice and future family. When will this future that we are threatened by every day finally come? Most teenagers think of the future as getting into the best college imaginable, but what happens after that? The years after college when we will decide our career path are also some of the most important years of our future as well. When we find a family, is just as impactful on our lives after we have set a career. So what really is the future that we are breaking out backs in high school to benefit, and when does it come? What the future holds, we will never understand at this point in our lives, but knowing that the hard work and effort we put in every thing we do, every day, will eventually pay off, is worth it in the long run.