THE ECHO

by Jacob Vereb

As I write this, graduation is less than a month away. It caught up to me faster than I thought it would. This time of the year would always excite me growing up. Two months of no school, free from any responsibility, free to do whatever I wanted before going back to school next year. But now the feeling is much different. There is no next school year, after this it’s just life.

My parents never really pushed college on me. I never applied to any trade schools or training programs. As of right now, I’m struggling to find even a part-time job. Graduation was giving many of my peers a sense of excitement, but for me it was nervousness. I had pretty much no idea what I was going to be doing.

It took a lot of reflection on my dreams for the future and some helpful talks with friends to come up with a baseline for my plans the next few years. Knowing generally what direction that I want to steer my life helped a lot. However, there was another realization that I made that helped ease my mind about leaving high school.

I realized that there is so much more to life than school and what you do as a career. The way that a lot of teachers and parents talk about it, it can seem like the only thing that matters is what college you go to or what job you end up doing. Those things are important, but are they any more important than experiencing other cultures? Are they more important than building strong relationships with the people in your life? Are they more important than seeing all the things Earth has to offer?

The point that I’m trying to make is that you can’t get too caught up in knowing exactly what you want to do with your life. If you have it all planned out already, that’s great. If you’re like me and just have a general idea, that’s also great. If you have no idea at all, that’s fine. Now, it’s not fine to just sit around and do nothing, that’s how you get stuck living with your parents until you’re thirty. Figure out what your interests are and start working toward them even if you don’t know exactly what school to go to or what company to work for.

What’s more important is that you go and experience life. I feel like no matter how you believe that we got here, most of us can agree that it’s a miracle that we, as a species, are here right now. Go see the world, make friends, fall in love, or go in whatever direction that your life takes you, just enjoy the ride. We only get one chance, so don’t waste it only focusing on school or work. So, to answer the question, “What am I doing with my life?” That’s easy — I’m going to live it.