Bakersfield.com

In high school I was in such a hurry to grow up I had already been dating my boyfriend for four years and was behaving like a woman of 26 not 16.  I was told not to try and grow up to quick to just enjoy being a kid so I slowed pace. Yet at 18 I was thrown in to this world and told to grow up. Scared and unsure I enrolled in a vocational college (I thought that since it was only nine months it would buy me some thinking time). This unfortunately leaves me wanting for the comforting surroundings of a teacher that gives you that almost eerie calm feeling of vomiting. As much as I swear I hate going to a school basic and simple in all its arts I must admit I kind of enjoy the placid experience and knowing if I miss two or three days I really don’t miss a damn thing. Nonetheless when do we know what to do with our lives? Several of my teachers tried to sympathetically inform me that they knew what to do after entertaining another field of study and just falling onto their “chosen” skill. But can I really afford to waste a few years of my life just outlining my life? Still I cheer on my boyfriend’s decision to take a year or two off from school to try and figure out his life. Though I must admit he spends more time playing his 360 then actually thinking about the future, not that I mind since it gives me someone to voice my fears to. He’s truly happy with his decision and I question why I can’t bring myself to do the same, is it because I'm too terrified or just too apprehensive about finding my ideal career to jeopardize losing any time in my life. At night I fall asleep wondering if I’ll ever really know what to do, I contemplate many thoughts but rarely fall through on any of them. So this leaves me questioning is any person ever in fact content with their employment? Truthfully this is only unsettling since I have a tendency to believe the notion that I’m the most stable and sound minded of those around me when it comes to my expectations. Especially since most of the people I know are too busy having children and getting married to really worry about how things will end up one, five or even ten years from now. So how did a girl like me go from being 16 and wanting life to accelerate to begging it to decelerate? Well I place it all to my senior year in high school, I was writing for the school paper (not that you can call it writing when you put your soul into it and your teacher rips it to shreds and changes every word) and was a Teachers Assistant. In fact I was so involved in school I was voted teachers pet, a title I sadly asked my friends to vote me for and even voted for myself. All this left me energized and sufficiently excited about my future, if only I could have foreseen this snag in the road maybe I would have had a better chance to prepare for the disappointment of an unfulfilling school and for being completely unsure of my future aspirations.