Student Opinion: The Pressure to Have Your Life Figured Out at 18 is too Extreme
Launch the media gallery 1 playerCongratulations, you’re 18. You have officially reached adulthood where the unwritten rule means the rest of your life has a plan.
You should know what college you’re attending. You should know what major you’re going to pursue. You should know what career path is right for you. You should know where you want to live, how much money you want to make, and hopefully you should have made the right decision at 18 for the rest of your life. There’s no pressure, right?
Somewhere along the line, I feel like society decided that turning 18 came with an invisible deadline to have a plan. The problem is that 18 is not a deadline. It’s actually just the beginning of our lives. We teenagers are constantly being asked the same question: “What is the next step after high school?” You hear this question start early, and at first, we are excited, until it becomes a regular stress factor within our lives. Eventually the question gets repetitive, gets tired, and it starts to feel like a job that we haven’t even applied for.
If there’s no answer, it feels like you have fallen behind. The people around you seem to have it all figured out, but really, we are all on the same page. Stuck in the thoughts of what is next. What is the right step for me that I will enjoy 20 years from now? Why has this become normal? We are only young and unsure of the world around us. We often think about how much can change in a few minutes. Then imagine how much can change in a few years for us. People change, people grow up, people move, and that’s just to name a few. The person that you faced in the mirror four years ago isn’t near the same person now: bigger dreams, bigger interests, and bigger priorities. Our plans for the future aren’t laid out yet; the truth is that we are still figuring it out as we go.
If I was to ask someone in their 30s if they imagined their life looking the way it does now when they were 18, there’s a good chance the answer would be no. Sometimes a plan works, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes the best things happen because the original plan fell apart. Graduation, attend college, get a career, get married, buy a house, have a family, and the rest will line up. There is no line that directs 18-year-olds, or even people of any age. Honestly, I think we put too much pressure on teenagers to make huge decisions at an age when many of us are still trying to remember when the homework deadline is. That’s why teenagers are scared to make the wrong decision.
But maybe there isn’t a “wrong” decision, but rather choices that will teach us what to do. Maybe instead of always wondering what is right after high school we should think about what we are excited for and what we want to learn. This leaves room for growth and possibility. Our goal as 18-year-olds should be to not have our life planned out before we even lived it, but rather what life do we want to have.
You’re not behind if you’re unsure because it’s just the beginning. No 18-year-old should have to figure it all out before it even started.