. SELF . Life's hard choices

Young and poor. I feel like a million bucks, like the world is my oyster. I can't go anywhere though. I have some very important things to finish, like my education. HA!

I, like many other teens, am feeling a bit disillusioned about this whole process society calls education. It was all good and fun until you actually have to make some life altering choices. What will you be when you grow up? Who knows, all I want to do is party, while I'm young enough to enjoy it. Relunctantly, I know it won't be that easy and it is in my advantage to stick with this education thing for just a couple more years. My goal though, is to get a job where I won't feel like I am wasting away behind some office, in some sort of socially imposed prison. In other words, I want to have fun, satisfying job.

This is where many people are seeming to get things a bit right. I definately should have taken a year off to explore myself. Not party too much, work and end being in the same boat when I'm done, but actually try figuring out who I am, what I want in life, what makes me trully happy and what will make feel like getting up in the morning. Go to career counsellors, talk with different people in different careers. It's been two and half years and I've been slowly exploring myself, while taking a full course load. I think, I'm slowly getting there.

This brings me to my next point. It will be a half a year of university that has been not wasted, but not exactly useful. I don't really feel too inspired. I still have some more soul-searching to do, but I feel like I am closing in. If I look at my education so far, I guess it has been helpful, in that I feel that I'm finally able to be a bit more decisive. I can say now with some confidence, what I do and don't really like. So, I guess that is where this schooling has been useful. I wish though, that schools would make finding your career easier. I had career counselling (mostly what everyone else in my grade had to do) since I was fifteen, but at that age, I don't know what I like or don't like doing, hell I didn't do anything "work related" whatsoever. So, how should I know if I prefer operating on someone's heart over, say, baking a cake. My concerns then where far from those related to my future career, as if that was a distant future that would only come after a very very long time. Well, now that I'm here, at a university that has been advertised to me all my life as THE "institution" to attend, I feel a bit lost. That's where the dissatisfaction comes from. It is as if the goal of my life was not exploring myself and attaining satisfication (and not only financial security, but something that feeds my soul as well), but to simply get to university, as if it was an end in itself.

Perhaps, it would be nice to have a well advertised 1 year education program with no true courses to take, just 1 to 2 week introduction courses, to see the basics of many unrelated life paths, like a vocational buffet of sorts. Interspursed in this smorgasbord of activities, there would be a place and time to read inspirational stories and maybe some non-fiction to help people learn more about themselves as well.

Anyways, life sucks only if you let it suck and I'm not ready to let it suck just yet.