Dare to dream

It is a beautiful scene: The inspiring melody of ìPomp and Circumstanceî fills the auditorium as the graduates march proudly across the front of the room. Parents sigh with sweet memories of their ìlittle ones.î Teachers gaze in pride and admiration at their students, and oh, the graduates! Heads raised, standing tall and proud, their eyes glistening from tears of joy as that sense of accomplishment comes after years of effort. They made it. Finally, their dreams will come true.
How moving. You can stop puking now. Heading back to the world of reality, itís time to face the facts. Most students struggle through their last year of high school, terrified by the harsh world ìout there.
î Caught up in the rush of keeping your options open and thinking and re-thinking what courses are the wisest to take, frazzled students are left to wonder if they'll actually make it through post-high school reality. Throughout your high school years, counsellors offer words of wisdom and careful guidance for your interests. Students pour over glossy university booklets with their parents, who offer caring tidbits of advice, recommending this, or discouraging that. Everything is perfect, down to those glistening tears of joy, right?
Wrong! It seems that in the mayhem of preparing adolescents for the world, studentsí interests often swerve, causing dreams to crash and burn when they realize that their dreams are just dreams, far from reality. Faced with well-intentioned parents and other wise folk who say you have to be practical, support yourself or are just in disbelief about your career choice, weíre often left feeling our dreams are not fit for survival. Instead, they get tossed aside in favour of money. Whatever happened to love making the world go ëround?
In todayís society, itís money that sets the world spinning. Got the dough? You got a life. Although some arenít willing to admit it, success is often measured by the size of your paycheck.
Translated: You have to make money. In our fast-paced society, dreams are often called fluff and fantasy. Our heartsí desires, our true callings, can be shunned. Dreams can be left in the dust in favour of making money. Students often end up choosing a path in life that is a path to money and so-called success.
What happens when those few who make it to the top reach their ultimate height? What then? Money canít buy happiness. Fellow students, look to the future. No amount of money can bring you happiness unless youíre doing what you love. Of all the advise a parent, a counsellor or a teacher could give, the best advise would be to choose your own path. Follow those dreams and make them reality.

Shoilee Khan, 18, lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, where she attends John Fraser Secondary School. She dreams of being a writer and wants to study journalism.

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