Well. School. I know that I’ve been bored all summer, but… where did it go? Shouldn’t three months be, well, slower? Do you ever get the feeling that time is an illusion and our time-keeping system only works by coincidence? Because I could’ve sworn that I’m not supposed to be in high school for quite a long while, but the calendar says I’m due for orientation in five days.
It’s odd, really. In elementary school, the future was really, really, really far away. Being a grown-up belonged to a different planet, if not a different universe. In middle school, it still seemed reasonably far away. But high school… I don’t know how, but it makes it seem a whole ton closer. I’m not supposed to be worrying about the SATs yet! I’m not supposed to have to think about college and a job and being a grown-up. But I will in just a year or two.
I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve decided that people often land in jobs they don’t like because they weren’t given enough time to really consider which career path they want to take. I’ve known I wanted to write since third grade, but what am I going to do in college? If I need a job to support whatever I make writing, what do I want that to be? Do I want to study psychology? Do I want to become a pastry chef? A musician? A teacher? A scientist? I don’t know. But the impression I’m left with is that the future is coming waywaywaywayway too fast. It seems far too surreal to imagine that in four years, I’ll be out of the house. A few years after that, I’ll be in the real world.
It just seems like it shouldn’t be coming yet. And while I know that this freak-out is a bit (make that quite a bit) early, that I haven’t even technically started freshman year yet, I just can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that “growing up” isn’t coming in some far off future. “Growing up” is happening soon. I’m going to need to decide what I want to do with the rest of my life in four years. Will I be ready? How will I have changed? What if I’m not ready? What if I feel exactly the way I do right now, disbelieving the fact that eventually I’m not going to be a student, but a member of society? What then?
Okay, I’m going to stop right here. It’s high school. Just high school. Alright, so I’m taking the PSAT this year. A test isn’t going to kill me. Nor will picking a college, or a major, or graduating from said high school and college. These things are very, very, very far from life threatening. Like the odd guy who gave that speech at our school said, these are “paper tigers.” You know, I’ve always wondered about that saying. Are the tigers cut from paper, or are they origami tigers? If they’re made out of paper, couldn’t you put them in the shredder? Or attack them with a pair of scissors? Or, potentially, color them bright purple? Such are the ways I occupy my time. Writing about paper tigers on a blog.
Okay, do I have anything else to say… um… I made brownies! And I learned how to bike to one of my favorite stores, and R. gave me a Hi-Chew and they’re oddly, strangely, inexplicably addicting. Probably because of the amount of sugar they have in them.
I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today. – William Allen White
Now why can’t I have that outlook on life? Silly, paranoid me.
-M
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