Cookie-Cutter Life

There are a lot of things that high schoolers "have" to do eventually. These things have varying levels of necessity, from taking calc to attending prom to attending college. On one hand, these "requirements" are ludicrous. Not everyone will go into engineering or other math-related careers. Some people feel alienated by big fancy social events like prom. And, believe it or not, college isn't necessarily for everybody. There's more to life than we're required to learn in high school, though to many teens, course rigor, social pressures, and often familial demands cut off our peripheral vision and only allow us to see one world, one path to take. This path varies depending on the teen's community and background, but for those who don't thrive in that cookie-cutter life are already handicapped.

To prevent being handicapped, we must force ourselves to pop our head over the fence once in a while and see that by 18, we shouldn't even believe in the idea of one possible life. High school and requirements aren't meant to be cookie cutters, they're meant to give us the tools to build our own cookie factory. What often seems like disabling is actually preparing us, but all this learning won't do a thing if we don't take some charge of our own lives.

I see too many teens watching too much TV and playing too many video games, and not enough teens out in the real world finding out what they're good at and what they love. When you are already looking for and discovering these things in high school, you're already chopping down that fence you thought you were in. You begin to get priorities and ambitions, and suddenly your life DOES have a path, one that you created yourself and one that will make you happy. Priorities and ambitions aren't born of sloth, however. If you're going to slack off on schoolwork, it should be because you don't need those tools anymore because you aren't going to go down that one path.

So rub your eyes, shake your head, remember your peripheral vision. And unless you're perfectly happy with all your requirements in high school, grab those tools and get started on that cookie factory.

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